Grains of Sand
by Shadowhawke
Summary: Sand can be swept by the wind, but in gusts they can also dance. A series of one-shots and drabbles following the Prince and Elika before, throughout, and after the events of the game.
1. Grains of Sand

**I - Grains of Sand**

Disclaimer: I own nothing, don't sue.

* * *

_Sand goes wherever it is blown. Tossed in the wind, it is helpless to its fate. But when the world shifts and the sand falls, the wind is fair in its gifting. _

They did not hold hands, but the back of their fingers brushed each other as they walked the glowing dunes. Side by side, for once they moved without urgency, without fear. In fact, any clueless onlooker would have just seen a man and a woman sharing a quiet day.

And they would be wrong. Because the Prince and Elika _never_ had a quiet day.

"So. How much further did you say it was?"

Her tone was arch, her eyebrow raised, and her look spoke loud enough that he winced. He stopped and turned to meet her gaze. "Okay, let's get one thing straight. I'm _not_ lost."

Her voice was insufferably patient, enduringly smug. "Of _course_ you're not. Which is why we've been walking for three hours since we left town, and we still haven't reached the sea."

He sucked in his breath through his teeth. "What did I do?" he asked the sky plaintively. "What did I do to get stuck with an impatient woman?"

He spread out his gauntleted hand and carried on his theatrics, even as she folded her arms and rolled her eyes. "I mean, I've never lied - much. I've only stolen from dead people. And everyone I've killed deserved it. Really. So what did I do?"

Elika tilted her head, looking at him through wide eyes. "Oh, I don't know. Cheated? Been a pain? Released a dark God from his prison?"

The look he gave her was injured. "Yeah, but I helped summon back the God of Light, didn't I? Doesn't that, I don't know, balance it out?"

That was it. Elika's unwilling smile widened and she laughed. He traced the sound lovingly with his eyes. She'd laughed too little in the dark times after their first day. The dark times that he'd unleashed, and that he'd willingly unleash again just to see her looking so alive. And two weeks ago... two weeks ago, his gamble had finally paid off.

Ahriman was sealed away once more to rot. She was still alive. The genuine grin he flashed back at her was almost blinding, and at that she smiled again, softer this time. One hand reached up to brush his cheek, affection tingling in its touch. "You got lucky."

"Lucky?" he scoffed, bringing a warm hand up to rest gently against her own. "That was all sheer, one hundred percent planned."

"Even the fall down the cliff?"

He scowled playfully at her, and then let his hand fall. "C'mon, Princess. Let's go find your sea."

She turned as he walked on, his stride surprisingly cocksure considering he had no idea where he was going. She smothered another smile at the thought and followed in his footsteps, the gentle breeze erasing their prints from the sand moments after they moved on. The grains were finer here than in the desert, and many more scrubby plants littered the dunes. She viewed each one with an undiminished sense of wonder, the blue-lit flowers catching her eyes. It was almost with a sense of reluctance that she dragged her gaze away from them and back to the nonexistent path they seemed to be following ahead "Fine by me," she said. "But since we're lost..." - he snorted - "How are you planning to find it?"

He looked back over his shoulder and smirked. The movement lightened the scar on his cheek and darkened his gaze, making her breath catch gently in appreciation. He saw her response and his smirk widened. Oh yeah. He still had it.

He was talking before she registered it. "... just open your ears," he advised, tapping his right one with his un-gloved hand. "You hear anything?"

She was about to fire back with a witty retort when she realised that she did. Hear something, that is. Elika's eyes widened slightly as she picked up the dull roaring.

"What _is_ that?" she asked.

His smirk fell, and a genuine smile leapt back onto his face. "That, Elika, is the sea."

Her eyes closed almost by instinct, letting the sound wash over her like a long-delayed greeting. It was still distant, but close enough that she could feel the enormity of it tremble within her very bones. She breathed in, noticing a slight tang to the air that she hadn't distinguished before.

Elika's eyes opened. "Then what are we waiting for?" she almost sung. The last three hours of heavy walking rolled away from her like the sands in the wind, and she felt as free as she had when she'd first learnt to fly. Laughing, she sped away across the dunes, leaving a momentarily flabbergasted Prince behind.

"Hey!" he started jogging, inwardly cursing the fact that some misplaced sense of chivalry had given him the backpack of supplies. "Hey, you could at least wait up!"

The only answer was the sound of her laughter, floating back to him on the wind. He shook his head, muttering. "Settle down, they said. Find a girl. Adventuring will kill you." He sighed dramatically under his breath. "They never mentioned the girl was likely to kill you too."

And then, out loud: "Alright then, Princess! If that's how you want to play it, last one to the sea gets the blame for releasing Ahriman!"

The words had their desired effect. Elika momentarily paused, stunned by not only the sheer infantility of the remark, but their newfound ability to joke about the horrible events that had just recently passed. And as she stood still, the laughing Prince sped past her over the dunes.

It was enough to trigger her back to her senses. Slowly, a competitive smile edged across Elika's face, and then she sprinted after him, her feet unnaturally light on the sand.

And that was how they travelled - one chasing after the other, never quite catching, never quite touching - swapping positions as lightly and as easily as trained acrobats. They spun circles around each other, leaping from dune to dune and kicking up a storm of sand in their wake. And the dance only stopped, physically, at least, when they reached the final dune and the land arced out in a soft cliff over the water.

She couldn't help it. She gasped.

It was beautiful. Beautiful. She couldn't even begin to think of words to describe it. The sea stretched out from horizon to horizon in front of her, its vastness incomprehensible to the girl who'd once ventured out into a canyon. Blue waves licked the surface gently, showing her a turquoise mirror constantly in motion, constantly in turmoil as it nudged against the sand. And yet, the beach was also quiet - the great, crashing waves that they'd heard from between the sand were the breakers far away in the distance, their foam crested heads nodding in recognition at the newcomers. But at their feet, the water lapped at the golden sand that was like, and yet so unlike the desert grains she knew.

"It's..." her voice caught in her throat, and she swallowed. She wanted to say something, admit something, but the look on his face was so insufferably smug at the moment that she bit the words away and replaced them with new ones, thoughtless and instinctive. "But how are we going to get down?"

She was cursing herself for her stupidity even before he gave her an incredulous look. The cliff was of soft sand, sandstone and shrubs, perilously slippery in some areas, frighteningly unstable in others. For them, child's play. He surveyed it with a glance, turned back to her, and shook his head in fake remorse. "Oh Elika, why do you even need to ask?"

They moved at the same time, in dual motion. He flipped himself over the edge with a shout of glee, the wind rushing past and tousling his scarves with his exhilarating pace. The sand skittered underneath his sandals, sending him flying down like rapids over a golden waterfall. Elika didn't restrain her smile as she flung herself next to him, riding the sand from shrub to shrub, swinging from their tangled roots to start the hazardous journey all over again. The clear, cool ocean breeze ruffled its fingers through her hair as they fell, flipped and swung. And then the bottom finally loomed close, and without needing to look at each other, they launched themselves off at the same time, spinning through the air to land safely on the sand at the bottom.

He was up first, groaning as a pebble dislodged by their descent thwacked him on the head. She stifled another laugh at his petulant expression.

"Oh, go ahead," he muttered. "Laugh at my expense. I swear, I've got sand stuck in places that you..."

She held up her hands. "Don't need to know about," she finished brightly for him. "Now stop complaining. We're here!"

The sheer exuberance in her face was enough to soften him again, and then she was bounding out to meet the sea. He swung the pack from his shoulders and settled it in the shade of the cliff. When he turned back, she was running across the edge of the waves, a flock of seagulls soaring next to her and her bare feet splashing up water.

The sight was enough to bring a grin to his face again, and he started down to meet her. But even as he moved, she paused, letting her arms fall to her side as she turned to gaze to the horizon.

It was magnificent. Majestic. Royal blue. It was beautiful. Breathtaking. And impossible.

He stopped a few feet away from her as she turned to the side, the exuberance gone from her features and replaced by a tinge of uncertainty. Carefully, she bent down to touch the wet sand. It moulded against her fingertips and she started with surprise at the unfamiliar sensation. Then she turned again, walking up away from him to where the dry sand lay, sifting in the wind.

This time, she knelt down and scooped a handful into her palm. The grains lay hot from the sun, and she felt them burn warmth into her skin. The cool wind caressed her cheek like a kiss, and at their new height, the sand danced in her hand. She stared down at them and felt the conflict in her chest. Cool wind. It was such an anomaly, such an alien to her. In the desert, the wind had rarely been anything below warm. In the desert, the wind had whipped mercilessly at the dunes, driving sand through the air until they scratched at your skin and blinded your eyes. In the desert, the wind had been relentless.

But here... the air wafted up from the ocean, carrying the clean, salty scent of purity and space that she had never even been able to dream of. The feeling stirred up something long hidden, something always fought down and locked in within her. Elika squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her fist.

The transformation was nothing if not stunning. The joy and exuberance which had lightened her features before was gone. Instead, the darkness of uncertainty, confusion and hurt welled up in the hollows of her cheeks, her throat, her closed eyes, and at their appearance, he almost instinctively moved towards her.

They'd only known each other for a few months now, each day measured in intensity against the first day where they met, fought together, won and lost all in the space of a few hours. And in the weeks that followed, they had screamed, shouted, fought each other and fought together with the same spark, the same intensity between them. And so it was that she didn't even need to open her eyes to know that he was approaching.

Elika let the sand fall from between her fingers as she felt his shadow, her inner grief leaving her mute. He came a little closer, his arms brushing against her shoulder as they watched the grains fly away in the swirling ocean breeze. Around them, the gulls cried out - a single, mournful harmony that had the Prince reaching out his hand and leaning into the wind even as he waited for her.

Elika wet her lips and tasted the salt on them. Breath moved and swirled in her throat, unwilling and unable to escape. She subsided, and let the sound of the sea wash over her again. Now, much closer, the rush of the waves seemed like music to her, and each chord softened the tense ball of nerves and muscles that was her body. The ocean wind too joined in the chorus, wrapping gentle tendrils around her skin and making her hyper-aware of the distance between them. He was breaths away from her, and still not touching, and yet she was conscious of every inch of him - the hard muscle, the sun-roughened palms, the tenderness behind the machismo.

It was that consciousness of his strength, of his silent support as he stood beside her that finally unknotted the last of the tension within her. Elika took a shuddering breath, expelled it, and felt the words come thick like honey.

"You know, for so long, I thought it was my destiny to save the tree. To die to imprison Ahriman. And now..."

The sea danced in front of her. The coastal wind planted kisses in her hair. She sucked in a breath, and when it came out again, her voice was small. "I never thought I'd live to see the ocean."

It was strange. The Prince felt it inside, an inexorable, inexplicable force reaching up to clutch at his chest. It was funny - they'd traded words now for so long it felt natural, almost like breathing. They'd ran circles around each other with their banter, propelled each other on with their taunts, and in the end, even used words as daggers to pierce through armour and slash and hurt. But now, she'd uttered a simple sentence, and it undid him.

He clenched his un-gauntleted fist, the one he'd held up to the wind, and lowered it down to his side. He worked with the lump in his own throat to get his breath out. And when the words did come, it surprised both of them.

"I promised you I'd show the ocean," he said quietly. She startled at his tone, completely devoid of his normal lightheartedness and levity. When she raised her eyes to meet his, the irises she met were dark with sincerity. "I wasn't going to disappoint you again."

It was a tribute to their closeness that she knew exactly what he was talking about. She closed her eyes and remembered the other coolness she had known - the sweet, black, cold oblivion of death, and a low shiver ran up through her.

Her throat felt dry. "You... you didn't disappoint me."

The look he shot her was disbelieving. "Nah, of course I didn't. I only screwed up your plan to be a martyr and released the evil God we fought to contain. That wasn't a disappointment at all, was it Princess?"

He sounded so angry, so bitter, so acerbically sarcastic that she instantly missed the openness he'd voiced. before. Elika winced. How was she to explain this, when she still didn't properly understand herself? After all, up until what seemed like forever, she'd still been angry at him. Had struggled to forgive what seemed like the ultimate betrayal from a man she'd grown to trust implicitly in hours. Had struggled to mask the hurt.

And yet, she saw the same hurt shine now from his own eyes, beneath the bitterness and acridity. She sighed again with the irony. He still wasn't sorry, she knew that. He was only sorry that he'd hurt her; that was the limit to his caring. The towns poisoned by corruption, the cities that had fallen to Ahriman - he had helped her painfully liberate them, inch by inch. But they hadn't been his driving force. They hadn't been his motivation.

Elika bit her lip. Weeks ago, she would have, still had, judged him for that. And yet, that was just who he was, and she'd learnt to accept that.

Now the struggle was just finding the right words. She breathed in. "I'm not sorry I'm alive," she whispered, finally. "I was at the start, but I'm not sorry now."

She gestured wordlessly at the sea, as if its vastness could contain all the feelings she wanted to convey. "What you did was wrong. So, utterly wrong. But you did fix that. You did. Finding Ormazd - that was the greatest miracle anyone could ask for."

His voice was hard. "But this isn't about Ahriman and Ormazd, is it, Princess? This is about you."

She breathed again. _Ormazd give me strength. _"I... I was the Princess, I _am_ the Princess of the Ahura. It is, was, my duty."

"_Screw_ duty," he cut in, shaking his head angrily. "I..."

She held up her hand. He fell rebelliously still. She sighed, and inwardly prayed. And when the words came out, they were much simpler than either expected.

"I like being alive. I love the places you've taken me. I love that I finally got to see the sea. It's just that... it was my life. Wishing, and knowing they would stay only wishes. Dreaming, and knowing that they'd stay dreams. Never wanting to wake up, but already being awake. To live this now - I can't describe it. For so long, I thought it was my destiny. My destiny to die like a Princess of the Ahura. But you..."

His unnatural silence was beginning to scare her. Not that she'd admit it. She summoned the last bits of her courage and moved on.

"You gave me Elika," her voice was wondering, awed, like a sleeper awaking to a dream. "You saved the world, damned it, and then saved it again, and because of that, you let me be Elika."

The world slowed. He felt the clarity of her words, the truth with which they rung, and most of all, the strength of what had been left unsaid. Because that was half the spark between them, what was left unsaid. The Prince loosened his fist and felt the moment change, felt time shift around him, felt the world rearrange itself into a brighter whole, and thought that he had to be the craziest, luckiest bastard on the face of the planet.

The sea whispered lovingly against the sand. He turned to meet her, his body no longer taut with hurt or shadow, his hand reaching out to touch hers. He saw relief and gratitude in her face at the sight, and then slowly, Elika rolled her fingers over his roughened palm, feeling the gentleness underneath the calluses. He closed his eyes at the tenderness of her touch, of the joining of hands which had fought, bled, and died for each other. And then her fingertips met two tiny obstacles, and she realised with a start that when he had lifted his hand up to the wind, he had caught two grains of sand.

She glanced up, startled, to meet his eyes. They gazed back warmly into hers, a soft smile completely devoid of pretence or defence gracing his lips. and Elika felt his hand fold up around hers, the two grains of sand resting between their palms.

The air was a spell between them. He leaned forwards, and she forgot how to breathe, the closeness of him and the sea intoxicating her senses. Instinctively, she tilted her head, and his forehead came down to rest against hers. Her eyes fluttered shut with a sense of rightness. Touching. They were finally, properly touching.

"You know," he said, almost conversationally. "I never did believe in destiny."

She opened her mouth to reply, decided against it, and shut it. Slowly, she felt his other hand slide lower, the gauntlet settling to a rest at the curve of her back. For a moment, they stood still in position, like dancers in some eternal waltz, and then their joined hands melted to cup each other's cheeks.

He descended. She reached up. And as they met, the two grains of sand he'd caught soared back into the arms of the wind, ready to be carried to the next adventure.

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A/N: I must admit, I never planned this. But after the wonderful reviews and feedback I got for 'I Believe', as well as some new inspiration from replaying the game, I've decided to embark on a series of oneshots and drabbles to further explore the wonder that is the new, revamped Prince of Persia. So thanks to all of the awesome reviewers who set this in motion, and thanks to all of you who are reading this - I hope you enjoy this endeavour as much as I will.

-Shadowhawke (aka newly converted and dedicated PoP fan).


	2. The Game

**The Game**

Her first word is "Why?", spoken just after the end. She receives no answer.

His first words come much later, hours into the desert with his aching arms still wrapped around her mutinous body. He, too, receives no answer. But that does not stop him.

"F."

She startles. She had been drifting in a strange world, a world where she cannot comprehend what he has done and her body cannot comprehend that it is alive again. She thinks this world is so impossible it's almost funny. But to hear his voice makes this world real, and that is unforgivable.

"F."

She wants him to stop. Now. But to make that happen, she'd have to speak with him. And she can't take that. Not now. So she says nothing.

"Oh come on, Princess," he says, but his voice is empty and dry like the wind. She shivers. She doesn't know this voice. She doesn't know him. "I know that you know what I'm talking about._ F_."

The desert around them is devoid of life. It is cold, the sun shining grey and black on dead sand. Growing pools of Corruption trickle sinuously through the land, and he has to walk, twist, or leap around or over them. It is more difficult with her in his arms. She notices this, and wonders at how he could possibly still be standing after the day they've had.

Let alone carrying her.

Let alone holding her with such gentleness that if she hadn't been so numb, she might have wept.

His voice cuts through it all. Empty desert, corrupted land, gentleness.

"Don't tell me you've given up. You haven't even tried. Come on, _F_."

There is a bitterness underlying his tone. The carefree laughter is gone, and the stink of betrayal lurks in its absence. For a moment, Elika is torn between sorrow and anger, and then anger kicks sorrow's arse. After all, what does _he_ need to feel bitter about? Why should _he_ feel betrayed?

She swallows around her dry mouth. "Fuck you," she says, and when the laughter comes, she can feel its hollowness in the chest she is cradled protectively against.

* * *

"W."

He doesn't give up. When had she realised that he didn't give up? It was one of the little things to admire about him, she had to grudgingly admit. Especially now, since it has been another hour. Or at least she thinks it has. All she knows is that a lot of time has passed, and he still hasn't collapsed. They haven't touched food all day, have drank only sparingly from the Fertile Grounds, somersaulted up and down her entire city, fought a Dark God and his servants, and he hasn't given up.

"Seriously." It may be her imagination, but she thinks that she detects a little more warmth, a little more of himself in his tone again. "W."

She tries to think up an appropriate insult. She decides that silence is the most effective weapon, given his chafing inability to be patient. She is right.

"Oh come on! Just try, won't you? Or else I'll have to tell you, and then that'll spoil the game."

The annoyance in his voice is superseded by a sort of exhausted happiness. She picks it up and is curious, but not curious enough to say anything. After another minute's trudging in silence, he gives in.

"Fine. Have it your way. Water."

He laughs again as she unconsciously jolts up, the dryness in her mouth temporarily overwhelming her senses. This time, the laugh is a little more him again, and while the massive majority of her is still absolutely enraged at him, a tiny portion of her files away its pleasure at the sound.

When they reach the old traveller's well blessed by Ormazd and free of Corruption, she notices that he does not drink until she has had her fill. And she hates herself for noticing.

* * *

She decides to start talking to him three days later. He gave her the impassioned speech two nights ago, but she decided to let him squirm in the grasp of her cold, silent wrath for a while. Every little piece of revenge is absurdly sweet.

She clears her throat and prepares herself. He is across from her, the fire he's lit for warmth and dinner playing across his handsome face. For a moment, she is annoyed at herself for noticing it again, and then sighs to herself and gives in. After all, she had said it herself. Good looks aren't everything.

Even when his are annoyingly good, and she still hates him, and the sight of him like this briefly makes her forget why.

"L."

His head snaps up. The almost brooding look on his face instantly vanishes to be replaced by a mix of wonder and hope, so tender it almost breaks her heart for a moment, before his own cynicism and expectations crash in and he becomes as protected as rock.

"I'll take a guess and say 'Land'," he says cautiously, sweeping his hand out to gesture at the dead bushes and greyness around him. She shakes her head. He bites the inside of his cheek, and then suddenly snickers.

"Laundry?" he tries, pointing self-deprecatingly at his filthy clothes. She shakes her head again. He hums in thought.

"Ahah!" he snaps his fingers suddenly. "Light!" he gestures at the fire, half-grinning. For a moment, the sight warms her, and then she remembers that she is alive to see this sight and the connotations of that, and she feels like she will never be warm again.

She shakes her head.

The spark of elation dies slowly of his face. She is both sad and vindictively happy to see it go. When she speaks again, her voice is icy as her heart.

"Liar," she says, looking straight at him, and then she rolls over and pretends to go to sleep.

* * *

But that does not stop him. Now that they're talking again, he doesn't mind so much that she stays as distant as possible, even as she grudgingly tightens her arms around his neck (and hopes he chokes) when they climb vines, and she feels his hand firmly in hers as they vault from plate to plate. He whistles as they scale buildings that spiral towards the sun. He hums as they destroy Soldier after Soldier and Corrupted after Corrupted. He laughs at her cross attempts to answer.

"C."

"Cloud?"

He shakes his head. She puts her hands on her hips, still distant, still cold, still hating him.

Or so she tells her self. "Cocky, arrogant bastard?" she asks pointedly.

He grins appreciatively. He loves it when she is herself. She hates it that a part of her exults in that knowledge. "Yes."

She's staggered. So much that she almost slips off the pole they are currently climbing. He laughs.

"No, actually. But good try."

She glares. He smirks. They flip from one hanging flagpole to the next as the darkness gathers. And when they finish the fight and are still gasping for breath, he casts a sly look in her direction, mutters "Crazy woman," and then somersaults over the wall.

* * *

They travel through cities. They sleep in inns. They hunt Ahriman and the Corrupted, hunt ways to seal him away forever, and in between that, they run away from people when he's caught 'finding' things. On the last occasion, she shakes her head as he shouts gleefully at her through the wind.

"T!"

They are sprinting across a roof. The ground seems miles below them. The surface they are balanced on is old and worn, and looks like it shouldn't be able to deflect the rain, let alone allow a grown man and a Princess to run impudently across it.

"Thief?" she yells back at him.

"No!" he shouts back. "This is the life!"

She shakes her head again as they make their way out of time. She wonders whether to say that that last one was surely breaking the rules, and then she remembers that this game between them is a little more complex than that.

* * *

They go through the letters of the alphabet. All of them, slowly but surely. It is hardly surprising, given the epic length of their quest. She smiles as she thinks of what she might have considered impossibilities. 'Xenophobic asshole', his turn, delivered succinctly in the direction of one of Ahriman's many Corrupted, this one using his power to destroy anyone he saw as 'different'. 'Yowling bugbear with scissors', his turn again, spat out with a kind of amused loathing when they met up with the Hunter once more. And it wasn't all him either. She'd gotten into the spirit of the game, even firing off a 'querulous idiot' in his direction between the numerous other things like '_blue_ sky' and '_green_ grass', and 'land-now-healed-no-thanks-to-you-and-your-stupid-schemes'.

But they never went back to 'F'. It was like an unspoken rule between them - he didn't bring it up out of uncertainty, and she didn't bring it up because she still didn't want to. After all, 'F' was dangerous. It could have been 'Friend'. Or 'Fate'. Or 'Faith'. Or even 'Forever'. And she still wasn't ready to contemplate either of them.

But of course, it was him. It was them. And so one day, the push comes shove and uncertainty no longer counts as the last of the Corrupted fall before them.

"F," he says, and her heart catches in her mouth. She wonders briefly whether she should ignore him or make a joke out of it. 'Failure' or 'Faggot' (she picked that up at one of the port towns he took her to, he still thinks its cute that when pushed, she now can swear like a sailor while still looking as righteous and pure as an angel). But of course, the former is a lie now that he is leaning heavily against his sword in all his glory, his tattered cloak flying behind him and blood seeping from his wounds. And the latter, she now knows, would only provoke more sexual innuendo to dance around.

Then again, ignoring would be no fun. She raises her eyes to meet his, both battle-weary warriors who by now know the sound of each other's heartbeats singing in the fight, and then she realises that levity is out of place too. Because for once, his mouth is set in seriousness, and that has happened so infrequently that she can count it on one hand.

She opens her mouth. "Final battle?"

He shakes his head. She purses her lips. She is exhausted, and it shows on her face. She sees him relent a little.

"Another clue, then," he grins disarmingly at her, using the hilt of his sword to drag himself upwards. "You know me, always ready to help a damsel in distress."

The look she shoots him is pure poison. "Oh, damsel in distress now, am I?" she asks, dangerously sweet. "And who was it that lost his donkey in the middle of a sandstorm and fell down a cliff?"

He flashes a brilliant smirk at her, and then sobers again. "F," he repeats, and then his eyes step into hers. "And it's the same thing I saw after we left the Temple. After you..."

He stops, because he doesn't need to say anything else. They both know. _After you died._ And suddenly she feels cold again. Cold and afraid of the intensity of his eyes, of something she can't fight.

She wets her lips. "I don't know."

"Come on," he cajoles her again, his look magnetic. She feels like he's pulling at her soul. "Don't give up on me now, Elika."

She shoots him a measuring look. His does not change. She wets her lips again, knowing the agitation playing in his body, knowing that his patience will break soon and he will tell her anyway. Because this is something important.

She shrugs again, at just the right moment when the tension gets too great. "I really don't know."

He exhales like a prayer, and she can see that he's almost relieved. Almost. And then he steps closer to her, and the way he carries himself makes her forget that he's limping, that he's bleeding. One bloody finger comes down to touch her lightly on the chin. She does not flinch away. They have moved past that, in the hundreds of battles they have fought since his betrayal. They have moved past into something indescribable, something that she refuses to think about. Something that doesn't need to be thought about, because deep down, they both know that they need each other.

He dips his head down to near her ear. She can feel the rough fabric of his scarves brush against her skin, smell the sweat and the scent of him. When he speaks, she almost leaps in shock because his breath is warm against the shell of her ear.

"Future," he whispers. "I saw the future."

She is shaken. She pushes him back a little, weakly, and of course he does not comply. Stubborn idiot. She takes a step back herself and decides to go for sarcasm. It has always worked well as their shield.

"What, have you become a fortune-teller now?" she asks, folding her arms over her chest. She doesn't notice that her shirt, damaged in the fight, rips a little more with the movement. He. does. Oh he does. And when she notices him noticing, the telltale ghost of a smirk against his lips, she flushes and covers up a little, directing his attention back to their conversation. "Want to read my palm?"

He focuses again. Looks her slowly up and down, and she realises she has made a mistake. He grins, and she waits for the comment, the remark, and is surprised when he doesn't make it. Instead, he sobers again.

"No. That's not what I meant," he pauses, trying to put his thoughts into words. "It's... I wanted to say it. I wanted to say that we _had_ a future. Even though things had just gone to hell..."

"Because of you," she can't resist snapping. She regrets it a moment later, but it's the truth and he doesn't flinch from it.

"Because of me," he agrees, his voice hard. "But I just wanted to say. We had a future, even then. And now..." he surveys the battle scene around them, the land now covered with life instead of dank pools of Corruption. Even though they've seen it a thousand times now, it never ceases to amaze him at how radical and beautiful the change is. "And now, we definitely have a future."

She catches her breath at his audacity. At the meaning. At her own fear. Because suddenly, she realises that it's the end of the road and he is right. There's no more reason to travel together. The last of the Corrupted, the last of Ahriman is gone.

And yet, he says 'We'. And now he is looking at her, his gaze guarded, and she knows that how she answers next will change everything.

Elika looks down at her hands. They are rough and callused, from sliding across rock, from gripping ledges, and from holding close to him when they climb. The thought reminds her of the feeling of her skin against his. Of how they fit. Of how right they feel.

But then, her hands remind her of other things. Of her being alive. Of the death to the Corrupted they have wrought, Corrupted who were set free to walk the land and destroy the lives of innocents because of the man in front of her.

He is aware of the thoughts going through her mind. She knows this with a crystal clarity as she unwillingly shifts her gaze from her hands and back to his eyes. They pin her down and demand an answer. She looks away, because she doesn't know if she has one. Because in the end, what have they had? Besides adventures to last lifetimes, and a verbal dance around each other only matched by the physical one they weave when they rain oblivion down on their foes.

She thinks of this, and realises that this time, she is being an idiot. But then again, who can blame her? Twice dead, royally burdened, months with _him_. Enough to lose anyone a shred of quickness.

She steadies her breath and looks back at him. There is a fading hope in his eyes, one that she can now see behind all the carefree masks and selfish pride. She thinks of their past, and realises that they have played the game with each other since they first met.

"F," she says softly.

He jerks with surprise. The tension has drawn out so long that he looks like his muscles might snap if he moves again. He swallows, disbelieving. "What did you say?"

A beautiful, broad smile full of light crosses her lips. Those have been rare since she died for the second time. "F."

He looks flabbergasted, but then the shock quickly dies down to sly appreciation, thankfully mixed with enough frustration to make her instantly satisfied. "Flower?" he drawls, indicating the bushes behind them, now made alive by their cleansing. It's clear from the way he stands that he expects a quick answer, a quick confirmation, but instead this time it is she who is flabbergasted.

But the answer lies in his face. Beneath the casual slide back into their normal banter, she sees despair struggling for dominance over acceptance. He thinks that she is just continuing the game, for now. That there is no promise of this future. That things will remain the same between them; as uncertain as sand in the wind.

He is wrong, and her breath catches at its extent. Her voice catches in her throat, and she shakes her head.

He is genuinely surprised. His eyes narrow. "Fly," he tries. She wonders if there are any around, or if he's just floundering for a lifeline.

She takes a step towards him. Slow and slinking, like she has done before. Done, and then taken everything away from him, leaving only a tantalising sense of her presence behind. Yet another part of the game between them. A part that she thoroughly enjoys.

But this time, this time he steps back. Her eyes widen. He _never_ steps back. He always looks hopeful, hoping, wanting. That's what she revels in. But this time, his eyes are downcast and he doesn't look at her.

With a start. She realises that he is afraid.

"Frog," he says, his voice small, and that is all the confirmation she needs that he is just throwing anything out at her now. Something almost close (but not, because it would be alien to his nature) to pity crushes her heart. She takes a step closer, and he starts to sound panicked. His shields are crashing down one by one in front of her, the magnitude of his gamble for the future stripping him bare. He has all but admitted his position, and then handed her the sword to either knight him or behead him. She recognises his fear as the one of rejection, of a soul-destroying renunciation of the tantalising firelight between them, and she regrets.

"Finger. Fish. Folk. Fin," he tries to keep up a lazy grin, as if he's just playing with her now, but she knows that they have gone past the game. She stalks ever closer, until she has him up against a wall, and then she pounces.

This time, it is her turn. She leans close to him. She touches his chest lightly with her fingertips. Her eyes draw his in deep, compelling, and he abandons his spluttered tries to awed, but still afraid silence.

She has him on the edge. She can destroy him with a word, because events have shown that she is his one weakness. Events have shown that for her, he will damn the world.

She smiles, heartbreakingly sad, sorrowfully beautiful, and wishes she could have seen this all sooner. Seen past her own blinkers and blindness. But then again, they have a future together.

She leans closer. Up onto her tiptoes, so that her warm breath tickles his ear.

"Forgiveness," she whispers, and when she pulls back, she knows that she has finally, irrevocably ended the game.

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A/N: May I just say 'Wow'? Thanks so much for everyone who took the time to review 'Grains of Sand', I was totally blown away by the support and feedback. You guys rock. I must admit, I don't think I would have been able to get this new one up so quickly without knowing you were there for me. So thanks everyone. Hope you enjoyed this one too (and if you did, or if you didn't, please do drop in and tell. :) )


	3. The Prince and the Princess

**The Prince and the Princess**

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The Prince

_He walks in sunlight, 'cross the sand,_

_His world a world of blacks and grays,_

_With gold in sight and sword in hand,_

_He passes through the endless days._

_But all alone he stands in flight,_

_And knows inside his mortal plight,_

_His drifting stance, his endless night,_

_Spent all alone and far from light,_

_So even though he tries to fight,_

_Believes in skill and human might,_

_Fate still holds him within its sights,_

_And sends him through a sandstorm._

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o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

The Princess

_She steps in dreams that thicken sleep,_

_And leave her shattered when it's bright,_

_Her heart is all her hope can keep,_

_She knows the dark, yet trusts in light._

_But hope can only last so long,_

_And faith can falter though you're strong,_

_One misplaced move, and all that's wrong,_

_Escapes and melts into the throng,_

_Of all that's broken, all that's come,_

_Of the myth where she belongs,_

_And so her soul flies in swan song,_

_Until it meets another._

o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The Prince and the Princess

_And now they're dancing both in time,_

_To tunes as old as black and white,_

_And while they're matched by grace sublime,_

_They see so different in the night;_

_Of his endeavours, lies and cheats,_

_Of her protection, sure and sweet,_

_Of his position, free and fleet,_

_Of her betrayal, cold as sleet,_

_And all the while their spirits meet,_

_And recognise they're incomplete,_

_And though they try to scorn their heat,_

_It's there, and burning brighter._

o.o.o

_So they will struggle, strive and pray,_

_They'll climb and leap and jump and fly,_

_They'll live to fight another day,_

_Because he had the guts to lie._

_And she will hate him for the quo,_

_In which he left the world to go,_

_To hell and back, with them in tow,_

_While evil lived, allowed to grow._

_But even while the debt is owed,_

_While they ignore, deny, and show,_

_They're fine alone; the river flows,_

_Where it wants and needs to go,_

_And something's there, so fine it glows,_

_The word for it grew long ago,_

_And when the day comes, they will know,_

_True love's as strong as fate._

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

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A/N: I am so sorry that this is so short, and neither the oneshot nor drabble that you were expecting. But I've been working on another oneshot for PoP that I feel needs some time time to develop to the depth it deserves, and I thought that I shouldn't leave you guys waiting until then. So here's an update. I hope it's worth the wait! And thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to all you amazing reviewers. You have each absolutely made my day and overwhelmed me with your awesomeness. I hope you keep enjoying my work. :)


	4. Of Magic Wands and Parlour Tricks: PartI

**Of Magic Wands and Parlour Tricks: Part I**

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_Come fall with me into this land,_

_Of shadowed light and voices slick,_

_Of tresses old and veils like sand,_

_Of magic wands and parlour tricks._

_

* * *

  
_

The instant that he reached for the next column and watched his hand pass right through it, he knew that the next few moments of his life were going to be very, very painful.

And, _like always_, he thought to himself, he was right.

"Who are you, little man?"

The voice rung through the air and split the cavern, and in response he felt his own thoughts trickle through his mind. _Who am I? No one you want to know. Then again, you __**are**__ a stinking heap of slime, so I guess things can't get much better for you..._

He snorted, pushed himself off the platform, and scrambled up the wall. The golden ring creaked under him as he clawed himself up again, seeking level ground. He could hear her laugh behind him, hear Elika cry out again, and something in his chest tightened. This wasn't good. This wasn't good at all. If she was injured or worse, his having a ticket out of here would fade from lousy chances to none at all.

Not to mention that he was almost beginning to like her. _Almost_.

He grunted as his arm strained under the swing. Who was he kidding? He barely knew her. And if his life was anything to live by, he didn't want to know her. It never paid to get too close, he reminded himself. She was just another person, just another human that would be transiently in his life and just as quickly be gone as...

_She's different. _

Try as he might, he couldn't quell the treacherous thought. He shuddered slightly and tried to push away the consequences of that. It didn't matter anyway, he reasoned. Because even if she was different, in the end, she was still a princess. And he, he was a...

"Prince or pauper?"

The Concubine swayed as she cooed, the fluttering pink curling around her bones and curves. He narrowed his eyes at the next jump, expertly calculating the distance even as a single thought flared up mutinously to defy her. Her and the world falling down around his ears.

_They call me 'Prince'. _

The sound of it echoed in his mind as he plunged ahead. There was a rotting flagpole up ahead, its securings perilously loose, but he grabbed onto it anyway. It wasn't like he had much choice. He was in the air, he had to get to where _she_ was, and the Princess...

He ignored the stupidity of what he was doing and cast a quick glance at her. She was doubled over in pain, her beautiful face taut with pressure as she tried to push away the force entangling her. Unbidden, a side of his mouth curled up in a smirk. That was the crazy woman he knew... for all of an hour and a half. Fighting 'til the end...

... not that there'd be an end. He set his jaw and concentrated back on where he was, on his position in the air, of the stretch of his muscles and then the contraction of them as he jacknifed through. Around him, the world was nothing but the infected decay of the Corruption, the stench of the evil and the goal in his mind to reach her. He skidded one last time against the grainy wall and leapt off with a shout, his sword extended...

Only to meet thin air.

Before his startled eyes, the wispy pink-and-slime of the Concubine whisked away, leaving only a trail of delighted laughter behind her. Almost automatically, he cast a glance at Elika. She was still wrapped horribly underneath shreds of Corruption, her face scrunched up now in a silent cry. Something inside him snarled at the sight, even while _she_ reappeared not five feet away from him... on the other side of an insurmountable wall.

Grinding his teeth, the Prince started all over again, her mocking voice ringing in his ears.

"Missed me?"

He scowled. _Like I'd miss syphilis. _She beckoned. "Over here, little man."

He landed back on the platform with a thump. _A stage, huh? The irony. _The trajectory of his jump carried him past the Princess, and he tried not to spare her another glance as he leapt again, this time for the opposite pole reaching up to his destination. She'd be fine, he tried to reassure himself. She was strong. He'd do something before anything else got to her.

Still, despite his attempts, their eyes met for the briefest of moments and he was aware of a tightness in his chest. He dismissed it as a lack of breath and kept going, feeling the movement burn his body. Three more steps, two...

"But now, where were we?" her voice was cloying, it was sickening, and every second of it made him want to wring her neck. "Oh, that's right. You. Hero, or thief?"

She tittered, as if she was proud of herself. Inwardly, he let his teeth bare in a cocky grin.

_Thief, and I'm proud of it._

But of course, she couldn't hear him. He wasn't sure if he wanted her to, as she tilted back her bony neck and regarded him. When she spoke, her voice was slow with condescension. "You don't even know, do you?"

He didn't pause. _Maybe, but that doesn't matter. _The flagpole creaked again and he was there again, naked sword in hand ready to ram into her chest. "You know," he spat, "The others don't talk. Not much, at least. I think I like it that way."

This time, he wasn't so surprised when the image blinked out of existence. In fact, he was so unsurprised he didn't even follow through on his swing. The Prince scowled. That didn't mean he had to be any less irritated, did it? He turned, saw her on the stage, and this time somehow knew there would be no more blinking away. The hunt was over, and the cat was ready to play.

The Prince grinned, and leapt back onto the platform, giving himself just enough time to look over at Elika again and realise that she was free.

Well, that was fine by him.

_She's all right. She'll be fine. That's all that matters._

* * *

_Come feel the trap and taste the fire,_

_Come tread amongst the accents thick,_

_With ancient woes and bloodied ire,_

_And magic wands and parlour tricks._

* * *

"She had you trapped."

The healing was over, and like the scoundrel he was, he was exploiting every moment of the rest they needed to needle her. He looked at her, arms crossed over his chest. She glared right back at him, chin up and eyes fiery. He smiled inside in silent appreciation. _Oh yeah._

"For your information," Elika snapped, "I wasn't _trapped_."

It was just too fun. Not to mention, kind of important. He raised his eyebrow. "Right. So you were just stuck in one place and moaning with pain for the fun of it."

_If looks could kill..._ "I warned you the Concubine's specialty was illusions," she said abruptly. "You could have been more careful!"

"Hey!" Now he was affronted. "I'll have you know that I was looking where I was going. Besides, shouldn't you be the one to do that? Since you're the one who actually lived here? I mean, these columns all look the same to me."

He regretted it the instant he said it. A dark shadow passed over Elika's face, and she turned away from him, her arms hugging her slim frame.

"I don't know this place," she said flatly.

If it was at all possible, the light feeling of life and radiance from the healing dimmed. The Prince frowned. Dammit, he hadn't meant it like that. He reached out a gauntleted hand almost instinctively, and then lowered it inches from her shoulder. No. He didn't have the right to do that yet.

Still, an idea caught him, and he changed the withdrawal into a gaudy flourish. "So, you said this was a stage, right?" he asked, forcing as much cheer into his voice as possible. "Right then."

He marched off to the side, gesturing again as if he were waving to a cheering audience. "Thank you, Ladies and Gentlemen! And welcome tonight to the production of 'Death of a Concubine'!"

"She's not dead."

Her half-exasperated, half-amused tone echoed in the cavern, and he turned around and flashed a grin at her. "What? I can dream, can't I?"

There. She was smiling openly now, and though it was strained, it was much easier on the eyes than the cold darkness had been. He grinned back at her in relief. "After all, I thought that's what this place was about. You know, stagehands, producers, actors. All getting caught up in make-believe."

Luckily, she didn't flinch. "So you want to be an actor now?" She chuckled dryly. "That'd be something to add to your resume. You know, along with 'pauper' and 'thief'."

For a moment, he froze. Damn, he'd forgotten how sharp she was, and he saw the reminder staring back at him now. There was a distant, calculating look on her face, as if he were a tool to be examined for faults. He ground his teeth. He was nobody's pawn.

"No." He sheathed his sword in one swift, deliberate motion that made the steel whisper. "I don't think 'actor' would really suit the likes of me. I've never pretended to be someone I wasn't."

His voice was hard, rung strangely empty in the cavernous expanse, and when she met his eyes this time she was the first to glance away. Oddly enough, he felt no victory from it. The Prince pursed his lips. He didn't want her to look at him like an object, but he didn't want her to look away, either.

"Hey," he softened his tone. "I wasn't fooling around before. Are you okay? She had you... it didn't look pleasant."

It seemed like it was with almost reluctance that she dragged her gaze back to him. "I'm fine," she said crisply. A weak dimple appeared at the corner of her lips, filled to the brim with bravado. "She specialises in illusions, remember?"

He snorted. Illusions. Things that weren't real, things that couldn't be touched. Things that faded away. Not like the tendrils of corruption that had been choking her, or the unsettling questions in his head. _Prince or pauper? Hero or thief? Tool or discard? ... Person or thing?_

"But will it happen again?" he forced himself to speak. "I mean, if that happens every time we meet her..." - _then you'll be in danger - _"Then we'll be put at a disadvantage."

Elika thinned her mouth. Against the soft light of the cavern, the movement shadowed the corners of her cheeks. "We'll deal with that when we come to it," she said decisively, in a voice that brooked no opposition. "Now let's get a move on. We've still got a long way to go."

* * *

_Then give in when you drink too deep,_

_When heart's afraid and world's ashift,_

_And dream of what you will in sleep,_

_Of magic wands and parlour tricks. _

* * *

The way she said it, he could almost see the pools of sparkling water, the sunlight dappling the flowers, the languid plants waving in the wind.

Almost.

The stone here looked cracked and dying, and he didn't even believe stone could have life in the first place. He eyed the sludge of Corruption and wilted ivy, the creaking flagpoles and rough columns that they'd have to clamber. He'd seen prettier landscapes in shanty towns.

"Yeah, well, after this is cleaned up I'm sure you can replant."

He didn't mean to sound so unconvinced, but she pursed her lips and swept past him anyway. Under his breath, he muttered another curse. _Yeah, real smooth. _"Seriously," he hastened after her, trying to persuade both of them. "I'll do it. Princess like you shouldn't be getting elbow-deep in dirt."

"Yeah?" he wondered if it was just his imagination, or whether a ghost of a smile really had flitted over her face. A moment passed, and he decided that it had. There was something about this girl, something where even the most insubstantial of her movements struck a chord in him as real as her skin, the feel of her as she grasped his hand and tossed him to another plate. The feel of her as she caught him. _Illusions?_ "So it's okay for me to get elbow-deep in Corruption, but not to pick up gardening as a hobby?"

"Hey," he jogged after her, lithe muscles avoiding the pools they'd filled and the uneven path before them. "That's now. I'm talking about later. You know, when you'll have those servants of yours again to wind you up and down those towers."

Her chuckle didn't reach her eyes. "You'd love that, wouldn't you?"

She didn't give him a chance to respond. Instead, in two quick strides she crossed the platform and leapt up onto the glowing power plate. Wordless, he followed her, and felt her as they launched into the air once more.

And as it had been previously, flying was still a revelation.

The Prince felt her beneath him through the pads of his fingers and the smooth joint of her shoulders. They rose high, higher than any mortal had the right to before plunging down through the winds and currents. He couldn't believe how free it felt, even as they soared on the predestined path of ancient magic laid down an eon ago. Heck, he didn't care. The least Ormazd could do was give them a joyride, he thought caustically.

Not that this was like any other joyride he'd ever experienced. He looked down, unable to see her face beneath the locks of her hair snapping in the wind. But he could imagine the intense concentration of her as she avoided columns and arches, as she saved him from the ignominious fate of getting splattered against stone.

It was electrifying, heartening, and humbling all at once. And he wasn't sure how to feel about that. For one, he'd never thought that this could happen. Right now, he was experiencing a miracle that he couldn't sneer at because it was happening. Right now, he was hanging on as an avenging angel flew beneath him, touching Heaven and facing Hell all at the same time. And it up here the wind stirred him, slapped him, reached deep inside him and reawakened something that he thought had died long ago.

Belief.

Of course, the flame was still small, barely even an ember. The Prince gazed down at the broken, corrupted landscape beneath him and felt cynicism curl its way into his smile. The world was still as bleak as he remembered, the people just as undeserving. He blinked as the wind whipped her strands of hair briefly in front his eyes, blocking his vision and redirecting his focus to her.

To Elika.

And the spark awakening in him stirred once more. Because she was someone that you couldn't call undeserving if you tried. She... from the little he knew of her already, from their passage through a little over half of her desecrated city, was different. Was special. Was...

Belief.

But of course, miracles couldn't last, and the Prince didn't expect them to. Perhaps he was just getting used to this place, now that he'd been here for what seemed like forever. Or perhaps he'd gotten sharper battling the Hunter and the Alchemist. But the instant Elika touched down and her slim fingers left his, he somehow wasn't surprised to see tendrils of Corruption sprout out from the ground and envelope her.

But just because he wasn't surprised didn't mean that he wasn't angry.

"_You_," he growled, advancing with his sword. "That wasn't very nice."

The Concubine laughed, crooked her finger, and sidled around him. "Oh my poor little man. She's tricked you, she has. But it's not your fault, you couldn't know..."

Her next words were broken as she lashed out at him with her parody of scepter. The blow was hard, fast, and designed to disable him while he was distracted, but luckily he'd kept his head through his anger. He ducked underneath the swing, brought himself up, and felt the claws of his gauntlet slide through where her throat should have been as he wrested her into the air. She let out a howl as he followed her, sword extended and smashing her to the ground.

"_I've_ been tricked?" he smirked coldly as he landed, turning to lay another blow into her. "I'm not the one who looks like a drag queen in slime."

She hissed at him. "Tut, tut. You of all people should know that appearances don't matter." She blocked his sword and caught the edge in the ring around her scepter, sliding it to the ground for a brief moment so she could knee him in the groin. The Prince moved, but not quick enough to escape the blow altogether, and he gasped as the bony point caught him in the stomach. Still, before she could move in a finishing blow, he caught himself in a roll, his cape swirling behind him as he leapt back to his feet. She laughed, her voice chilly. "After all, little man, your Princess won't be so pretty when she's cold and dead."

As if to emphasise her point, she clasped her hand. From behind them, Elika gave a strangled cry. And that... that was enough to make him see red.

The Prince roared. It mingled with Elika's scream in the air, and the combined sound leapt into the world like a raging angel. He leapt again, feeling the corded muscles in his arm fuse with the sword in his hand.

Blade and sceptre met with a ferocious clash. He disengaged and swung again and again. Sparks littered the ear, the smell of their sizzle burning his nose. But he paid no attention. The world was about wreaking vengeance, was tinted red by his rage, and...

The Concubine laughed once. Coldly. And then the sceptre that had been moving to block him ducked under her guard, and he literally saw red as he was thrown back.

What happened next, he felt rather than saw. She came towards him with a shriek of triumph, sceptre raised high in the air and ready to spell his end. The foul smell of her breath and body brushed against his nose as she straddled him, her foul laughter ripped his ears to shreds as he tried to struggle against his dazedness. But in the end, he didn't have to.

There was a stream of light, of pure blue that broke through even the haze of pain around him. And then the Concubine's weight was gone, and her scream died into nothingness.

The Prince lay there for a while, regaining his breath. It had been a hard hit, he could still feel it reverberating through his bones. He'd taken worse, of course. Much worse. But still...

He heard a movement, and winced. The movement made his face contort in a fire of pain, but he pushed it back as he felt her stand over him, felt her kneel down by his side.

"Ormazd," her breath caught. "Are you all right?"

A smile spread across his lips. It hurt like hell, but he smiled anyway. "Just fine," he said raggedly. He opened his eyes, noted the fading red haze, and stared into her gaze. She truly had beautiful eyes, he noted dizzily. "Just fine."

For a moment, relief swept over her face like a tidal wave. But then it vanished, replaced by anger, and her lips thinned. "Good, Because I swear, if you do anything that stupid again, I'll..."

Her voice seemed to catch in her throat. He closed his eyes again as she searched soundlessly, trying to find the right words. He didn't need to see to know that when she did, she looked as hard as stone and granite.

"I swear, I'll make you sorry I ever put my trust in you."

_Ouch. _

Inside, he registered the thrust of the statement, the unspeakable power that he should have been able to shrug off. The surprise of his reaction alone made him stay silent, his thoughts running uncensored through his mind. There was so much he wanted to say to that. Something to cut, something to wound, something to deflect. Denial, banter, righteousness. But he must he must have taken too long, because when she next spoke she sounded unnerved. And almost... apologetic?

He smiled to himself in a corner of his mind. So he was wrong. There were miracles after all.

"Look. I... I need you to help me here." It sounded like the hardest thing she had ever said. "Don't leave me in the lurch by getting all heroic."

Keeping his eyes closed took every ounce of his will. "I wasn't being heroic."

She said nothing. In his self-imposed darkness of truth, he heard her walk away finally, heard her chant, and then physically _felt_ it when the gardens cleansed. He wondered at the light on his skin, the warmth that suddenly kissed his forehead.

_Illusions? Miracles?_

When he finally opened his eyes again, hers were unreadable. "Come on," she said. "Let's keep going."

He nodded, tossed off something sarcastic, and stood up. As he moved, his body ached and swore at him, mouthing filthy obscenities that muscles and flesh shouldn't be allowed to mouth. Their chorus echoed with her words, still hanging heavy across his memory, and he pursed his lips as he turned to leap into the air again.

They still had so far yet to go. The rest of the Concubine's lands laid before them, sickened and twisted by her touch. The task before them seemed impossible, but yet...

Yet she was by his side. The glow of her hands and her eyes seemed to bite into the darkness, seemed to illuminate her face and smile as she followed him. And with that sight burned into his brain, the Prince fought through the receding pain and moved into it, jumped headfirst into the shadow.

And unbidden, an oath he never thought he would ever make again welled up in his mind.

_I won't let you down again. I promise._

_

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A/N: I do apologise if this update makes no sense, has spelling mistakes, and/or is weird in general. I've finally realised that the trade-off of a drabbles/oneshot series means that it's better when I update frequently, and since this one's been bouncing around in my head for a while and I gave you such a short piece last time, I thought I probably shouldn't delay any longer.

I hope you guys enjoyed it, nevertheless. And if you did, or if you didn't, please send me a line about it. :) A girl only wants to get better.

Oh, and yes. This is the first of a multi-part series of one-shots that I'll be posting here. :) Hope you enjoy!

-Shadowhawke


	5. Interlude: Gone Fishing

**Interlude - Gone Fishing**

_A/N - My sincerest apologies for not having the next part of 'Of Magic Wands and Parlour Tricks' up. Not only has my week been chaotic, I've realised I need to replay parts of the game to get it to the standard I want, and the closest savegames to the areas are over 100 lightseeds away. _

_But since I promised to update this regularly, and this IS a series of oneshots AND drabbles, I thought I might compromise with a little, random interlude. I hope you all enjoy._

_

* * *

_He furrowed his brow, not really wanting to go anywhere _near_ the direction his imagination was taking him now. But alas, necessity dictated that he ask; necessity and common sense. Because the Prince was a great fan of staying alive, and that usually meant gathering all the information available on his foe, no matter how horrible.

So he steeled himself, and took the plunge.

"What happens to fish when they get corrupted?"

The instant the words left his mouth, he regretted it. He could almost feel the apprehension (_apprehension_, not fear) dripping from his voice. But across from him, Elika didn't seem to notice. Instead, the princess wrinkled her nose. "We-ell..."

Right on cue, the stink hit them like a punch in the gut. The Prince reeled back as something from the pond below began to flop around, distinguishing itself from the black mass of Corruption. He caught a glimpse of it as it fell back into the pool, sending a sludgy spray of darkness against the walls.

"Ohhhh no," he shook his head decisively, backing away. "Give me five rounds with the Hunter, unarmed. I am not going _anywhere_ near that."

Elika allowed herself the time to cast him a withering glance, before stalking forwards. "Baby."

"Hey!" he unwillingly followed after her, powered only by the extent of his male pride and ego against the ungodly stench. "Be reasonable here. I signed up to fight a Dark God, not the worst smell known to man."

He tried to hold his breath after speaking, and failed miserably. There were a few seconds of muffled whimpers as he shoved his gauntlet over his mouth, and then a despairing wail. "Oh geez," he groaned. "This is worse than the time I had to break out of Babylonia through the sewers. A _thousand_ times worse."

She arched an elegant eyebrow. "And _why_ did you have to break into Babylonia through the sewers?"

He suddenly looked uncomfortable. "Ah, well. There was this thing, with, uh, and I... never mind."

He didn't see it, but something twinkled in her normally serious-set eyes. "Well, you _did_ want something to eat before," she said brightly. "Now's your chance."

There was a sudden, horrified silence. And then she counted five seconds before the sound of agonised retching hit her ears.

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... hope you liked. Sorry, I know I'm not very good at humour. But trying counts, right?

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A/N II - Oh, and sorry, just one more note because it's so important. I just wanted to say thank you, THANK YOU so much to everyone who's reviewed. The support and feedback is really appreciated. And I especially want to say to the reviewers who don't have accounts and who I can't reply to, I'm really glad you're enjoying this, and thanks for reading! I can't say how much I value your comments. Thanks again, and I hope you keep enjoying this series!

-Shadowhawke


	6. Of Magic Wands and Parlour Tricks:PartII

**Of Magic Wands and Parlour Tricks - Part II**

* * *

So venture deeper, travel forth,

Into your mind so deep and slick,

You'll find truth colder than the North,

And magic wands and parlour tricks.

* * *

Now that they were past the Cavern, past the Palace Gardens, he could see the signs of life behind the Corruption - the fading messages that people had lived here. Against the old walls there were the grip marks of old passages, and at their feet rang the echo of worn marble and rock. As they ventured in deeper and deeper into the palace, he saw glimpses of rooms - faded bedding, decaying furniture - all coated with the slime of Corruption. He wondered how long they'd last - how long these small, innocuous pointers to an old people could bear the brunt of evil. Seconds? Minutes? Hours?

Mentally, he slapped himself. Why was he worrying about shadows of the past when every next step could mean certain death? He narrowed his eyes as he ran past another room, getting a second's glimpse of a small, neat living space draped in darkness. Whoever had lived there... certainly wasn't there any more.

For a moment, the thought made his blood run cold. He was a graverobber, true. But no stone passage he'd entered had seemed quite so empty, so quiet. There, people were laid to rest. Here...

_It's not ghosts we'll find here. It's illusions. The Concubine will be waiting for us._

The remembered words rang sharply in his mind as he leapt forwards again, clinging onto a column before throwing himself back onto solid ground. For a moment, the memory of the rock imprinted into his was comforting. At least something was real here. At least he could cling on to something. It was almost frightening how everything else was falling away from beneath him. He'd really thought it would be a quiet day...

As he pushed himself up, he heard a soft thump behind him as she landed. Almost automatically, he turned to check if she was all right, and then just as automatically, began scolding himself.

_Of course she's all right, you idiot. She's the one with the high-flying magic and the know-how. _

As if to mirror his thoughts, she looked up at him with an arched eyebrow, her breath coming in short gasps from their running. "What's wrong?"

He frowned, and turned back. It felt like the world was tilted wrongly on its axis. "Nothing. Ah, just, where to next?"

Perhaps the memories were taking their toll on her, because she didn't call him on his stumble. Instead, she simply lifted up a slender hand. He watched as a bright blue light burst from her palm, so beautiful it almost hurt his eyes. Above them, it hovered in the air for a brief second, and then raced away like foam down a stream.

Blinking away the spots, he ran after it, and away from her, still slightly shaken by the strangeness of his response. _What's wrong with you? _he thought. _Once this is over, you'll be gone. And so will she._

He almost tripped over when another voice came to him. _Or maybe not. After all, you did promise to replant her garden. Who knows what might go on from there?_

He gritted his teeth. Why had he said that? What had he been thinking? He hadn't... he hadn't travelled with anyone else for months. Hadn't formed... attachments. Hadn't even considered it, so why had it changed now? He wracked his brain for an answer as they moved through the palace, every movement uncertain beneath him. Ever since he'd fallen through the illusory column, he'd doubted everything. Ahriman he could take, once he'd seen it with his own eyes. Even Elika's otherworldly magic he could swallow. In fact, it was quite palatable since it had saved him so many times. But the Concubine...

The Concubine was something else. He'd made his living based on his judgements of the world around him, judgements so hair-raisingly sharp-edged that one wrong calculation could have sent him to his death far quicker than he would have liked. But the Concubine twisted that around, turned it upside down. As he moved, he was acutely aware of the fact that everything safe might be dangerous, and every dangerous thing might be doubly so. The uncertainty raised his hackles, and the fact that against that background he was thinking about a future he'd never considered...

He was going mad. This was proof. First he'd fallen down a damn cliff, then he'd followed the crazy woman, and now he was fighting a damn God. It was enough to send anyone insane. Yes... that was right. That was the only reason he could possibly be contemplating...

_You crave her, don't you? But all she has in her heart is purpose. _

Despite himself and the stupidity running in his head, he found himself glancing sideways. There she was, striding tall beside him. Her eyes were fixed unerringly forwards, the odd trace of blue occasionally shimmering from her hair and sloping down to caress her cheek. She moved with a grace that he'd never seen before - not the smooth, silky steps of tavern dancers, or the practical seduction of other women he'd known. No... she walked as if she was driven by air and fire, as if the softness of her skin could burn. She walked like a cat across her savannah, hints of the predator flashing through in her smile, in her teeth, in the litheness of her muscles. She was different, she...

_She serves her people. She serves Ormazd. She has no space left for you._

That was it. The Prince ground his jaw and then loosened it to speak out loud. "It's... so damn quiet here."

As if on cue, a ghostly chuckle floated to them on the fetid air, and the reminder of its owner soured his mood even further. Almost automatically, he checked his footing. Hard marble, that could have been the storm-tossed deck of a ship for all the stability he was feeling right now. Beside him, Elika's voice was a dry leaf in the wind.

"I told you. All we'll find here is the Concubine and more of Ahriman's soldiers." Her eyes were flat, old. "Then again, this place was never loud. At least not in my memory."

It was the bitterness with which she said it that moved his tongue. The bitterness and the finality. He started forward. "Hey... I've been to a few places in my time. And I'll tell you, some of them had this feel about them. Like they were dead, and they'd never breathe again."

He regretted his pause for breath at the look on her face. "Look. What I'm trying to say is that this isn't one of them. Who knows? The city could come back."

They were making their way through a glassy corridor now, lit only by the host of stars outside and the sickly moon. Far off in the distance, Elika's light danced its way through broken columns and twisted doors. The shadows drew themselves over her face, and he took a brief moment to stare at the sadness in her gaze.

"Maybe," she said, her voice a little hollow.

The way it came out, he was expecting more. As it was, she hesitated for a brief moment before continuing, her step a little less sure than before. He frowned and followed, pushed off balance by the unexpected and not quite sure what to say.

They turned the corner into yet another corridor, their path blocked by the enormous designs of old chandeliers. Around them, the silence bore down on them oppressively, broken only by their footsteps. It made him feel on edge, made his spine draw like his blade out of the sheath. He cast another sideways glance, just to reassure himself. And yes, she was still there, real and touchable - skin stretched tight over worry, over distance - making her skin sallow but her eyes glimmer in the lack of light.

He felt an overwhelming surge of relief when she broke the quiet abruptly. "Who's out there waiting for you?"

He startled, but covered himself with an easy grin. "The whole world's out there," he said expansively, gesturing at the window. In the distance, the wind sifted sand across the desert, and the irrational part of him wondered whether that was an illusion too. "Babylonia, Carthage - sand and seas, sun and sky."

Her frown shadowed her eyes. "You don't have anyone special?"

Where was this going? He hooded his own gaze and stared back at her, scintillating. Was she trying to...?

_She has no space left for you._

No. He settled back into his persona with a mixture of disappointment and relief. The combination sent uncaring daggers to tear up his words. "Don't need anyone but myself. Not with the world."

At the corner of his vision, he saw her bite her lip. "I... I almost envy that. Almost," she shivered and then turned away from him, taking in the whole place with one sweep. "I mean the world. You sound so _free_."

Suddenly he felt uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. The implication in her voice made his skin prickle with the strange weight of chains he'd never noticed, and he tried to shrug them off with abandon. "But?" he asked.

She turned away a little, casting her gaze around the walls. Walls which closed in, which pressed down, which shut up. "But then I look back here and think. All those years that people were trickling away from here, the palace gradually getting emptier and emptier..."

She paused and took a breath. It was almost pensive, almost yearning. "You really don't have anyone else?"

_I have a horizon,_ he reassured himself._ I have my life. Sometimes it's enough._ "You rely on someone else, they'll just let you down."

Even as he said it, he felt the heaviness weight him down. They were scaling a ledge now, digging fingers in deep to the crumbling mortar and clinging on for dear life to the wood. And so it was that he almost fell like a stone when she cocked her head and looked at him.

"You haven't let me down."

For a moment, their eyes met and something changed. It was like a part of her soul had opened to him, and a part of him leapt in response. Temporarily relaxed were the wary boundaries, the bitter tang of distrust and strangeness. Instead, he thought he saw something different - something infinitely smaller and much more delicate. Like a flower in bud, something was growing, and he dared himself to believe in it just before his memories sprang up on him and imprisoned his breath.

The Prince looked away, reached the end of the ledge, and jumped back to solid ground. When he heard her behind him, this time he consciously refused to turn and check. Instead, the instinct for movement spread in a caustic smile across his face, one that held more weight that he was used to.

_You haven't let me down..._

"You haven't known me long enough," he said out loud. This time, the finality was in his voice, and he could taste it coming out. Slow and bitter, guarded and cynical, and he took in every flavour of it. Truth could be a sadistic bastard, but no one could say he was a slow learner. Besides, he'd tried. Tried and gotten burned, and he wasn't about to make the same mistake again. The Prince moved on ahead, fully intending to shift back into the silence that had driven him crazy...

Only to be stopped by a sound. A real one. Not the daggers of his memories, the distant laugh of the Concubine, or his companion's hollow reminisces. Something else. Something distant, but beginning. Something with the weight of the world, and yet the strength of a miracle.

"It must be awfully lonely."

The sound of her drew him back, compelled him to turn and look again. This time, he saw that in the shadows her dark hair curled against her cheek, that her tresses framed not empty, but just tired, tired eyes still full of starlight. And perhaps it was that, perhaps it was the moment they'd shared before, or perhaps the silence had just gotten to him, because he smiled.

"There's loneliness, and then there's loneliness," he said finally. And this time, in the moment between their gazes meeting and the continuation of the journey, he did not pull away.

* * *

_Come sleep away the endless night,_

_And wake to realness, cold and sick,_

_The threat is there, the end of light,_

_Through magic wands and parlour tricks._

* * *

"Now _this_ looks more like a royal palace."

Despite himself, he couldn't hold back the real awe in his voice. Even under the filth of Corruption, the place was beautiful. And in his opinion, that was _definitely_ saying something. Blue tiles glittered where the faint starlight hit it, spiraling all the way up to where the night engulfed his vision. Around them lay soft gold, dimmed greens - colours to shine the stone and fill the air between pools of blackness. Beside him, Elika smiled.

"The Spire of Dreams - it was built for a queen two, three hundred years ago. A spire to dreams. A place to look into the future."

His ears perked up as his eyes roved around the sides. They'd have to use the flagpoles to get to the platform, and then from there... "Can you really tell the future in this place? That would come in handy."

She coughed, and his eyes turned back to her. The sight was just as beautiful, if not more interesting. A thousand different emotions flickered over her skin, changing like gossamer on the wind, but always with the same steely strength underneath. "It's symbolic. The spire is to show what you can achieve when you dream."

She hesitated, and then continued, caught in the trance of the place. "My mother used to tell me whatever I dreamed of here would come true."

He cocked his head, still caught in the trance of her. "What did you dream of?"

She laughed dismissively. "Oh, the usual childish things. Come on, we need to find a way to..."

He pointed at the poles without looking, and kept his gaze fixed on her. "Come on. I want to know."

He smiled as she gave in, as she told him of merchants and spices and far off places. Her voice floated past his ears as he tested the weight of the wood, as he threw his cares to the wind and leapt, flipped, and leapt again. And as they both flew through the air, he wondered if she knew how she sounded. He'd noticed that when she spoke of her dreams, her places, her voice took on a soaring quality, as if her spirit were a bird on the currents of her fantasies. In response to the freedom of that sound, he felt an undeniable tugging in his gut. Freedom was what he'd always wanted, wasn't it? What he'd craved? And he'd found it, travelling the world. Always ultimately alone, except for his donkey. Yes. That was freedom...

... wasn't it?

When they both landed on the platform, the last of her memories filtering from her lips, he pushed away his thoughts and turned to smile again. There was solid, shifting ground under his feet. "Now you can go to those places," he offered without thinking. "I'll take you there."

He had no time to regret, she simply switched off. One second her face was shining with light, the next she was withdrawn again, closed. "Sure," she said, her voice flat. "Now come on. The mechanism over there will take us up."

He blinked. What had just happened? What had he said? He followed her dumbly, his hand swinging slack by his sword and his mind a million miles away as they pulled the lever to ascend. He'd let his guard down there again, let his mouth run away. But even then, he couldn't decipher her response. Disbelief? Distaste? Despair? He was still sorting furiously through all the possible reasons when they were startled out of their path by laughter, and every conscious thought in his mind turned to water.

"Welcome, welcome to my spire of dreams!"

Her voice echoed through the empty space, and as one they grit their teeth as they pulled the lever yet again. At the whine and grind of the machinery, he felt something akin to foreboding prickle against his skin. The world seemed to physically lurch under his feet again as he prepared for more insubstantiality, unreality, sickening fantasy. The sound followed them tauntingly.

"A place to tell the truth, a place for love. Welcome to my spire!"

The Prince narrowed his eyes. "She's beginning to annoy me..." he muttered. "Really annoy me... Elika?"

Just as the feeling of foreboding ramped up to cold realisation, the black tendrils that had been swirling on the ground swung up to catch her. With a cry, the princess staggered and fell. He took three hopeless steps towards her, before consciously dragging back his hands.

"Princess?" he asked, his voice sick.

She opened her mouth to reply, but then a pained groan came out instead. Behind them came another laugh. "What have we here? Are they real, or are they a dream?"

He was moving before he knew it - four quick strides to the pink-clad monstrosity outside the mechanism door. But then the memory of her agonised face drew him back and he was stuck. Sensing his dilemma, Elika forced her head up and met his gaze.

"Go, find her! I'll follow when I can!"

The sight shouldn't have affected him so much. A part of him knew that, but the rest of him swept it away, like foam on the rapids downstream. Her eyes were agonised, her lips clenched, and the vision drove him before he could think. The Prince nodded curtly and then leapt forwards, sword unsheathing and striking in the same whisper at the demon before him. The Concubine laughed as the illusion winked out of existence.

He cursed and followed. There she was again, ahead of him, a sneer marring her elegant face. He padded warily, senses whirling. Illusions, illusions. What was real? What wasn't? Was it all in his mind?

"Come, catch me if you can!" she sang. He darted forwards in the same breath and slashed down, hoping with all the strength of his blade that this time he'd hit something solid. But yet again, there was nothing - like sand slipping under his feet. He whirled and saw her yet again, three meters away and strutting in front of the fallen Princess.

She beckoned insultingly, her decaying hips thrust forwards and her lips in a pout. "Come find me, little man!"

He growled under his breath and moved back, feet running light over the dank surface and blade extended to strike. _This is getting personal_. It felt like he was moving through tar, trapped by the chance of it all. She was _playing_ with them, toying with them, and the thought that he could do nothing but play along boiled his blood.

_You want to play? Then I'll show you my claws._

He leapt forward and struck, just as she vanished before him and Elika remained. And then what happened next was a trick of the light, a sleight of the hand. The Corruption slithered away from her limbs and she stood up instinctively. And his motion was carrying him forwards, and there was only air between him, and she was standing straight in the path of his sword...

He felt the sinking in his chest before his mind registered what exactly was happening. But the reaction was enough. With a cry, the Prince jerked back every strand of his muscle and whirled. His sword keened through the air, inches from her flesh, and then lodged in the side of the mechanical lift itself. He felt the shock of it shake through his shoulders, felt a sting open up on his arm. And then there was nothing but silence again. The Concubine was gone. He and Elika stood in the lift where they'd started the minute of nightmare, and they shifted like dreamers waking up from sleep.

He dropped his grip from the sword and turned. "Elika?"

If the world had felt like it was shifting under his feet before, now it felt like it had simply dropped away, leaving him treading on air. The Princess was pale and resolute before him, her limbs shaking slightly form her battle with the Corruption. But she was whole, and she was real, and he felt sure that if he reached out and touched her he'd meet something solid.

She swallowed. "It's okay. I'm free."

_I'm free. _

Two more words. Two more simple words, but they were uttered right after he thought he'd ended it all, and more importantly, they were from _her_. The Prince let loose a shuddering sigh and felt a weight lift from his shoulders, like ghostly chains vanishing from their long-lingered place. "Are you all right?"

It was clear that they were both shaken, but she smiled oddly anyway. It reached her eyes, lifted the veil there, and for a second, made her shine. "You didn't let me down."

It took a second for him to work around the lump in his throat, a wall larger than the world he'd travelled, and then it vanished. "Didn't plan to," he shrugged, half-mocking, half-serious. He looked at her sideways as he pulled out the sword with a swagger, sheathing it again with a flourish. "In fact, didn't ever _dream_ of it."

This time she laughed. It brought colour back to her cheeks, flushed her skin, and he grinned openly as he saw it before checking himself. _No_. _Not now. Not... not yet. _The grin disappeared like an illusion, the ghostly weight settled back onto his shoulders, and when he looked again the world had returned to its constantly shifting status.

If she felt the change, she didn't mention it. Instead, the sparkle died down in her eyes and she drew herself up. "Right then," she said, her voice determined. "Ready to keep going up?"

The words pulled his eyes upwards, to the top where she'd spent her nights as a child. For a moment, his mind flashed to the image of a young girl, her face thrown up towards the sky, dreams running through her mind. And then the image faded, until another was brought up behind it, a picture of a young boy in a field with his eyes reflecting the stars.

He shook his head to clear it, and then he was back on shifting ground, in a world he knew could not be trusted and with a woman he barely knew.

_Ready? _

"Always," he smirked, and launched himself onwards.

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A/N: I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who's reviewed so far. You guys are truly my inspiration, and I really hope you're enjoying reading this as much as I enjoy writing it! On a more specific note, I hope this makes up for my last short piece and that it was worth the wait! Thanks again for reading. :D

-Shadowhawke


	7. Interlude: The Last Battle

**Interlude - The Last Battle**

_And now for something completely different..._

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* * *

_Elika pursed her lips as she looked him over. Somehow, she wasn't surprised that he hadn't made even the slightest effort, as if it were just another day. The same dusty scarves flowed over his defiant eyes, the same long-laced boots shifted above his muscular legs. Perhaps the only change of note was the fresh cut on his chin and his odd, almost defensive stance...

Elika blinked and looked again, this time focusing on the tiny, innocuous details. His rakish hair fell cleanly behind his scarves, clearly freed of its normal load of grime, dust and sand. His normal stubble was gone, and the skin underneath gleamed in the desert sun shining in from the open window. She took a moment to appreciate the tiny glimpses of his preparation (and the whole package, of course), before he coughed and spoke.

"Well?" he asked shortly. "What do you think?"

She hid a smile, but she felt some of it escape to light up her eyes anyway. Not that it mattered. He was far too apprehensive today to pick up anything so subtle. Besides, she didn't really feel like hiding it out of anything more than the custom of trying not to be too obvious while laughing at his expense. After all, _she_ wasn't the one about to risk her life today. No... she'd made the sacrifice once already. It was his turn, this time. His turn to look into the jaws of death and not turn away.

That thought, and a sudden sneaking suspicion only augmented by his defiant look, dimmed the growing laugh bubbling up in her throat and she frowned. At her change in expression, he shifted tensely. "Well?" "

The impatience in his tone confirmed it, and her eyes narrowed. "Did you sharpen your sword this morning?"

He gave up on trying to stand still and began pacing agitatedly, stopping at the end of the small room to throw a baleful look at her. "Of course," he snapped. "What do you take me for?"

Elika rolled her eyes. "Never mind. Just... stop pacing. You're making me nervous too."

He stopped almost immediately, instinctively, the cessation bring him to a halt right in front of her. For a moment, she saw every corded muscle in his arm, every fibre of tension locked up in him, and then he sighed and relaxed. "Sorry," he muttered. "It's just..."

He caught himself, and the accusing glare returned. "Hey, wait. Why am I apologising to you? You're the one who got me into this mess."

_Oh, that was just asking for it_. She lifted a perfectly curved eyebrow, leaned back and folded her arms across her chest. "Is that so? Then who was the one who released Ahriman? Who was the one who didn't kill when he got the chance? And who was the one who virtually blackmailed Ormazd to get him to agree to the conditions that _you_ thought up?"

The Prince scowled. "Yeah, and who's the one about to enter the worst life-or-death battle he's ever fought? You could at least give me some sympathy."

It was probably the slight pout that did it, just the barest protrusion of his lip and the hurt look in his eyes. But then again, she'd known him for too long to fall for his tricks, so it had to have been her own mind that voluntarily set her fingers up to lightly brush his face. He looked away from her at the touch, the scar drawn livid against his skin shadowing his features, and she sighed.

"Come off it," she scolded gently, her hand following his movement to cup his cheek. He nestled into it almost absentmindedly even as he kept scowling, the gravity of the danger ahead all to clear by the storm on his brow. She reached up with her other hand and tried to stroke away the darkness with her thumb. "Who had the nerve to stay and fight? Who had the determination to stick it out to the end, chasing after a legend? Heck, who had the _guts_ to bring me back and survive my wrath?"

Unbidden, he smiled into her palm, and she felt the movement of it slide across her skin like warm honey. He raised his ungauntleted hand to press against hers. "I did," he smirked, a trace of his normal cockiness sneaking back into his voice. "And don't you ever forget it."

She didn't hold back the laugh this time. Instead, she let it breathe out, soar into the air between them, and then fade away as she leaned forward to press a kiss against his forehead. "And with that ego, you could face down a thousand Ahrimans. Come on now, get going. We don't have much time left."

At the reminder of his impending doom, the Prince pulled back. The movement dropped their hands to their sides, and with that the shadow returned in his frown. "Yeah..." he muttered. "Don't want to make the thing angrier than it already is."

She glared at him. He smirked darkly back, happy to score points where he could. She rolled her eyes again and pushed him gently in the back. "Come on then."

He grudgingly began to move, his strides short and forced, his tread that of a prisoner going to his executioner. She felt her own nerves begin to overcome her. What would happen if their gamble failed? If he was right? If this really was the wrong way...

A few paces from the door he stopped and turned back to her, breaking into her thoughts. She blinked as he hesitated, and then took the plunge.

"You know, I really would feel more comfortable with you along." His fists clenched and unclenched nervously, and he attempted one of his rakish grins. "I mean, I've just gotten so used us fighting side by side now, and this is going to be one hell of a battle."

She wavered, just for a moment. Perhaps... but no. This really was his own battle. All she could do now was try to alleviate the nerves, so hopefully he didn't do anything stupid and get himself killed. Steeling herself for the role, she reclined back, opened her eyes innocently, and drew in an incredulous breath. "Why, is the new Prince of Persia _scared_?"

The look on his face was priceless. "No! No, uh, of course not. I just..." he cleared his throat and straightened, trying to look as regal as possible. "I just think it would be wiser if you came. You know, back-up. Strength in numbers and all that."

Inside her, something relented. For the life of her, she'd never seen him so shaken, so scared. Of course he was trying to hide it... he wouldn't be him otherwise. But from having fought by him, fought with him for so long now, she could tell how much he was affected by the prospect of what he was about to do. The prospect of his failure. The thought entangled her in a sudden surge of sympathy and she stepped forwards lightly, her blue magic swirling from her hand to touch him first before her skin did.

"Hey," she said softly. "I believe in you."

The words floated through the air, almost unreal in their simplicity. For a moment after they passed, there was an unreadable look in his eyes, almost a waver. And then she reached up and kissed him, and he cracked. Sweeping down, his gauntleted arm came around her tightly as he kissed her fiercely back, and for a moment there was nothing but them, their past, and the words left unspoken in their fire.

She pulled back first, the arbiter of necessity. He withdrew reluctantly, committing every inch of her to his memory as he pulled away. And then he smirked again, his normal cocky exterior slipping over his face like a mask, and he was gone.

It took a few seconds for her to comprehend again the enormity of what was about to happen, and suddenly the impulse to run after him, fight with him was irresistible. After all, she had the upper hand with both warring parties, she could...

She shook her head firmly. No, she couldn't think like that. After all, they'd planned it already. She'd done what she could, set up the groundwork so at least there would be no element of surprise. Now it was all up to him. Him, and what lay on the other side of the door.

She only hoped he came out alive.

* * *

The Prince moved quickly now, his feet carrying him ever closer to his doom. He put the thought firmly out of his mind as he strode down the corridors of the old Palace, focusing instead on the lingering taste of her on his lips. Elika.

Elika.

Elika. The impossibility made flesh - the person who'd seen death twice and still lived. Elika. The miracle made human - the flawed angel who he still wondered at, who he still couldn't believe was at his side. Elika, the incredible who he still couldn't believe had chosen him, after all this time... who deep inside, he still wasn't sure if he deserved...

The Prince shook his head, and tried to push his insecurities away. _I shouldn't be thinking like this, it's not helping. Not now. Not just before... no. Not thinking about that either. _

He took a deep breath and tried to re-direct his thoughts. Elika. The girl he fought for, the girl he fought with, the girl he'd damned the world for. The memories were almost comforting as he hastened towards the last battle. After all, they reminded him that she had been worth it. Was worth it. Was worth everything...

Even risking his neck like he was now. His pace slowed only marginally as he approached the set arena, his hand oh-so-very consciously moving down to brush his hip and the hilt of his newly-sharpened sword. _Whatever you can fault me for, you can't say I'm not prepared. _He took a few deep, shuddering breaths just before he crossed the threshold. _Ormazd, if you're still out there watching over us..._

The thought stopped in its tracks. Who was he kidding? He'd virtually asked for this. No, wait. He'd _literally_ asked for this, this miracle-cum-nightmare. If he had to be honest with himself, he still had no clue where the idea had come from. But then, as they'd stood before Ormazd and he'd remembered the horrors that had accompanied the journey to him, the wounds they had inflicted on her, the thought had just come and he'd asked.

And the miracle had been granted.

And she had been shocked.

And then she had been surprised.

And then angry.

And then incontrovertibly grateful.

And now, he was very, very dead.

_Oh well, no sense in delaying it. _The Prince tilted his chin, readied his stance so he could pull out his sword at any time, and then stepped into the room.

* * *

There was a thunderous, thunderous silence.

The Prince coughed. Then he scuffed his boots. Then he became angry at himself, lifted his head, and settled back into defiantly glaring.

"Look," he started off abruptly. "I know we didn't get off to a very good start, but..."

The once Corrupted, once King of the Ahura, and still Elika's father met him glare for glare. "You prevented me from reaching my daughter, twisted her mind, and tried to kill me several times. And now you want to ask my permission for her hand?"

_Oh, he was just asking for it. _"I... _we_ are not asking for permission." It almost came out as a snarl, but he remembered to temper it to a growl at the very last moment. "Hell, you should know. You really think Elika would consent to being just given away like a posy of flowers?"

If looks could kill, and then resurrect, the Prince knew he would be dead a hundred times over by now. "So yeah. We're not asking for your permission, we're asking for your blessing. Or your acceptance, at least. Because you know, it means a lot to her, and..."

He'd had to talk himself out of many situations before. Situations that normally involved him getting caught for something he shouldn't have gotten caught for, so it wasn't as if he were an amateur. In fact, he really considered himself quite the professional given the number of things he'd gotten away with. And so he knew from the King's black visage that he was losing his audience. Fast.

And so, like the professional he was, he bit his planned words back, considered the situation, and then threw caution to the winds.

"Actually, you know what?" he snorted. "Forget it. I don't know why I figured I could appeal to your better side. I mean, you pretty much started off all this. You know how miserable you made her? I can tell you, I was there and..."

The King's eyebrows pulled together. "You're not making your case very well," he rumbled ominously.

The Prince gritted his teeth. "Fine. The point I'm just trying to make is that we're both doing this to make her happy, aren't we? So let's do that. Make her happy."

For a moment, he thought he'd struck gold. The King's visage softened and blinked to guilt. But then the scowl came back, and the Prince sadly settled for silver. "You're a thief. A lowlife. Don't think that just because you're royal in name now that you have royal blood. And don't think I don't know some of the more sordid details of your past, besides the fact that you tried to kill me so many times. Why should I trust you with my daughter? My daughter, that I traded the world for? Why on earth should I believe that _you_ will make her happy?"

The Prince opened his mouth.

And then stopped.

What part of it wasn't true? In the darkest depths of his mind, his heart, he'd thought some of them for a long time. From the moment they'd both finally managed to get past everything, to touch after dancing around each other for so long, awe had paired in himself with uncertainty. With worry.

He bowed his head as his swirling insecurities resurfaced. It wasn't just because she was a Princess. After all, after all they'd done, he was a Prince now. The honorary Prince of Persia. It was more that sometimes, he wondered just what he'd done. What miracle had led to this angel wrapping him in her arms. How he could possibly deserve to touch such light and not be burned.

_Why indeed..._

For a moment, he almost felt everything slip through his fingers like sand torn by the wind. His own doubts, uncertainties, fears... they came boiling up through his blood to howl in his ears. She was the first person he'd let get so close in such a long time. She was beauty. She was light. She was Elika. She...

_She stayed. Throughout it all, she stayed. Even when I'd destroyed her world. _

_..._

_She stayed. _

The Prince took a low, shuddering breath, and looked up. The King stood before him, an almost smug cast to his face as he looked down. So. He thought he'd won. Thought he'd delivered the killing blow, the parting shot, the coup de grace from which there was no return...

But he was wrong.

_Why on earth should I believe that _you_ will make her happy?_

The echo rung in the Prince's mind, and with the words he smiled darkly, confidently. And then for the first time that day, he pulled himself up to his full height - strong, tall, utterly sure of himself. He had it now, he had it. And Elika's father would see just how much it took to make him go down.

_Ahriman couldn't do it. Ormazd couldn't do it. And I'll be damned if you manage to._

"Why should you believe I'll make her happy?" he repeated slowly, drolly. The words dropped from his lips like the build-up to some great joke, or the feint just before the fatal stab. "Actually, I think the question should be completely different. Because at the end of the day, whatever you think of me, she chose me. Elika. The girl we both damned the world for."

The King's smugness froze into expressionlessness. The Prince's smirk deepened. "So the real question should be, just why are you standing in my way now? You're her father, you know how strong she is. How good she is. You out of everyone should know she has what it takes to make the hard decisions, and that applies to whoever she wants to spend her life with. I'm just the lucky, lucky bastard who... well, got lucky."

He took a breath, feeling the giddy truth of it rush through his bones. "So if you really had anything against her choice, you would have told her when she mentioned it to you. Straight then, to her face, you would have refused. So why are you so against it now?"

The King twitched. "You... you and I have met at the wrong ends of a blade far too many times for me to trust you. I..."

"Hey, none of that now," the Prince strode boldly forwards a few steps, his gauntleted hand curled around his hip. "You got your men to drop a rock on me first."

The King opened his mouth.

Then closed it.

Then glared.

Then opened it again, and this time his voice carried no challenge, only a thinly veiled sense of disgust and surrender. "Well," he muttered. "She may be as you say, but she clearly has a terrible choice in men."

And like his daughter, the unsaid words said more than he ever could. The Prince's smirk dropped and turned into a grin - full, wide, and shining.

"Your Majesty," he bowed slightly, ironically. And when he straightened, the old King was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

The instant he came back through the door, she was up and flying across the room, moving at such a speed he was astonished she managed to stop short before him. "You're not dead. You're not dead!"

He tried to summon up a glare, but it dissolved into a grin. "Do you really have that little faith in my fighting abilities?"

She didn't deign to answer to that. Instead, she pulled back for a second and appraised him. "He's not dead either, right?" she asked suspiciously.

He thought about teasing her, remembered that part of the deal he'd struck with Ormazd meant that she still had enough power in her little finger to rip him to shreds, and reconsidered. "We were good," he said dryly. "I promise."

"Thank Ormazd," she breathed, and then remembered the reason behind their mission in the first place. "And... and what did he say?"

The Prince opened his arms and stepped forwards. She almost instinctively stepped forwards in response, her own hands going up to encircle around his shoulderblades. And as they cradled each other, two warriors who had just faced the last of their deadliest battles, he answered.

"I am the luckiest bastard in the world," he whispered into her hair. "The luckiest, luckiest bastard."

No more needed to be said. Elika froze for a moment, and then her face lit up into a radiant smile. And at the beauty of the sight, the confirmation, the acceptance, something finally broke within him.

And, at last, he believed in himself.

* * *

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A/N - Wow... this was meant to be just a short drabble while I suffered a week of tests, the flu, and writer's block with 'Of Magic Wands and Parlour Tricks'... but it ended up like this. Hope you enjoyed it anyway, despite the lack of planning!

And one more thing, my dear readers and reviewers - especially to those who I can't reply to since they're reviewing anonymously, I just want to let you know how much I appreciate each and every one of you. Thanks so much for taking the time to read and reply, to let me know what you think and where I can improve. You make it possible for me to sit down at my desk after a day of studying and hacking my throat out and _want_ to write.

So yes. Thanks again to everyone for sticking with me. I'm honoured to be sharing this ride with you. :D

-Shadowhawke


	8. Of Magic Wands and Parlour Tricks: P III

**Of Magic Wands and Parlour Tricks - Part III**

**

* * *

**_Now fall in deep and play along,_

_Sign all your soul with hands too quick,_

_You'll find the world's a different song,_

_With magic wands and parlour tricks._

* * *

Maybe he was getting a little tired. Maybe he was feeling a little sick. But that didn't stop him from exhilarating in the feel of the wind stroking his cheek, the sensation of flying through the air as Elika tossed him from plate to plate...

The knowledge that this was stupidly, impossibly, suicidally dangerous.

"Wooohooo!" he cried. The sound of careless joy ripped from his throat, ringing oddly against the backdrop of the ancient Spire and its ethereal inhabitants. Above him, he made out a flicker as Elika rolled her eyes, and for some reason that made his grin even wider.

"Oh come on," he shouted. His voice was whipped away by the height, the distance they travelled as they alighted on yet another plate and he felt himself tossed forth yet again. "Just 'cos the world's going to hell doesn't mean I can't enjoy myself!"

The words followed him from behind. "You're an idiot," Elika let out her breath through her teeth, reaching down to fling him against the wall just a smidgen harder than she needed to. "Just concentrate on where you're going!"

_Going? I have no idea where I'm going. That's half the fun._

He reached against the stone and felt the comforting impact, leaning against it and defying the laws of gravity as he swung himself to the next ring. Then he leapt back into space, reaching up and trusting her to be there. It was funny how easily the movement came, without hesitation. A day ago, what he was doing would have meant an instant death. Now, it didn't even occur to him that she wouldn't be there waiting, that her practiced fingers wouldn't snatch him from the gaping stretch below. How strange that was should have struck him. After all, hours were not nearly enough to count such trust by. He'd known people for years and never told them his real name.

But it didn't strike him. Because he was too busy blindly trusting, blindly moving, blindly exulting in the flight that by all rights should have been denied to any mere mortal such as him. The Prince let out another whoop as he felt her fingers seize him and fling him again, harder, until he reached the next glowing plate and started it all over again.

Of course, things couldn't stay perfect for long.

Her voice sounded throughout the vertical expanse, its echoes scrabbling against the walls and grating in his ears. "What are your dreams, little man?" she whispered. Her tone spoke of pillows and beds and poison, and his hard-won good mood instantly vanished. "What fantasies can I make true? What desires will you paint upon my canvas?"

He gritted his teeth and struck out for the next wall. This time, when the wind kissed him, he ignored it like a scorned lover. She laughed, and then spoke again, a vaguely lilting sing-song that made him want to find her and rip her throat out.

"Gold and riches? Sweet tender kisses? Power? Strength? Close your eyes, my prince, my king, and we shall _taste_ your dreams together..."

For a moment, his eyes almost flickered shut. Despite the fact that her voice disgusted him, there was something clearly compelling, almost hypnotic in its reverberations in this place. This ancient place of dreams. But his gaze snapped back to attention again as he skittered against the wall, as he almost lost grip of the ring. The stumble was enough to send Elika's glance lancing in his direction, and he swallowed under its fire before he realised it wasn't directed at him.

"Ignore her," Elika called. Her own voice was oddly hollow, oddly transcendent against the rock. It didn't sound human. "She's trying to distract us. Focus!"

As if the Concubine was on some perverse timer, she chose that moment to start again. "And you, princess?" her tone had dropped to honey, melded to silver. "I know the dreams you've dreamed. Your mind travelling distant lands, your body trapped in this decaying place."

She paused, as if considering. "We're not so distant, you an I. We share many desires..."

He chose that moment to glance up. Despite her own advice, Elika's face was pale. He watched in awe as in a second, shock, longing and sorrow chased themselves across her translucent features. In that moment, she seemed a little more human, a little more touchable, and he was almost sad when it passed, leaving only revulsion.

"I'm nothing like you!" Elika shouted to the ceiling. This time her voice was as real as anything, as full as a spirit or ghost. "Nothing!"

Her face was twisted with anger, her eyes flashed like the crackling of some terrible storm. He gazed on her, on the rips in her shirt, the dirt (and worse) smudged against her skin, and thought he had never seen anything so terribly beautiful...

And then her grip slipped a little on him, and he remembered exactly where they were, exactly what they were doing, and exactly how far his infinitely breakable body was off the ground. "Elika!"

Her eyes snapped back down to meet his and her face cracked and shuddered. Subconsciously, he filed away the sight in his mind, even as something in him curled and responded to the suddenly disoriented cast to her features. She tightened her hold around him and his heart started beating again. _Ah, well, _he thought._ One good turn deserves another._

"Don't worry, Princess," he shouted over the wind, emphasising the last word to make sure he was heard. " You're pretty. She's made out of slime. Do the maths!"

Her slightly glazed eyes cleared. For a moment, she hovered between a smirk and surprise, her mouth opening like she wanted to say something. But then she closed it as the wall came up to meet them, and they reached for the next plate together, neither of them faltering.

Wherever she was, the Concubine clearly didn't like that. The veils from her voice dropped, leaving cutting-edged mockery behind. "You're lost in a dream, little man. Both of you. You think she will save her people and have room left for you? All a pretty dream..."

He didn't have time to slip or fall, because he was too busy concentrating on anything but _her_. Luckily for him, the sound of Elika's hiss was loud enough to distract him.

"Ormazd will return, the city will shine again. Dreams, dreams, dreams! She sleeps with the day and wakes with the night!"

He readjusted his grip and kept moving, his tongue wedged firmly against the soft inside of his cheek and the hard bite of his teeth. _I sleep with the day and wake with the night too, ducks. Works quite well for a man of my trade. _

"But you, little man... you can still wake. What do you need of dreams? Turn from her, from dream. Make your future a reality!"

This time, he was sure he and Elika ground their teeth in tandem. "Does she _ever_ shut up?"

It could have just been a slight twitch, but he swore that Elika's grimace softened for a moment to a smirk. He matched her, as they flew over another death-defying drop. It felt good.

But what felt better was looking up and realising they were almost there. The smirk turned into a grin as the sight of solid ground filled his vision, reinvigorating his muscles and boosting him forwards on a wave of his own enthusiasm...

... that quickly turned into a wave of sheer desire to keep moving forwards, just so they could find the damn Fertile Ground, and thereby find the Concubine so he could throttle her.

"What do you know of her, little man? What do you _really_ know of her?"

He clenched his teeth. _Nothing, nothing, and absolutely nothing. Just enough to know I shouldn't trust her, shouldn't like her, shouldn't want her..._

The impact of horizontal stone under his feet jolted the last of his thoughts out of his mind.

_... when I do._

He bent his knees and lurched forwards, panting. She alighted next to him, blue sparks still shivering from her skin and illuminating her drawn features. They'd made it. He peered down over the side in a daze to confirm it, and shuddered and pulled back almost instantly. _Which was something to be said_, he thought wryly, _for someone who was so good with heights._

Elika straightened. "There's the mechanism," she was still gasping lightly, and the movement made her substantial again. "It should take us upwards. To the..."

"Fertile Ground," he finished for her, his tired features merging into a savage grin. "Oh goody."

They stumbled towards the smooth circular device awaiting them, shaking hands finding hard wood and pushing forwards. He grunted as the mechanism swung, the dizzying feeling of ascension leaving him feeling light-headed. "Let me know when start to feel, you know, stuck."

She snorted, eyes to the ground as she pushed. "If I have to tell you that I can't move, we're both in trouble."

He'd just moved his mouth to form a reply when their ride shuddered to a halt. Blinking, the two of them stepped forwards cautiously, settling into their defensive stances as they ventured forth. They'd just managed to make it off the mechanism when the horrible noise of grating stone reached their ears.

Almost by instinct, he grabbed her arm and dived forwards, even as the ground they'd been standing on moments before vanished twenty feet down with the shrieking whine of rock against rock. Swearing, he broke their fall with a hastily outthrust arm. "We've just lost our way out of here!"

She opened her mouth to answer, but what sounded was something hideously different. From somewhere around them, the Concubine laid it on thick. "But why would you want to go?" she pouted. "That wouldn't be polite. Not for a guest!"

He clenched his teeth and pulled himself upwards. She ignored his proffered hand and stood herself, her eyes darting around. "Where is she?"

There was a low chuckle, and then... "Just waiting... for my _Prince_!"

In retrospect, he really should have seen it coming. After all his paranoia of illusions and lying insubstantiality had kept him primed, kept his adrenaline pumping and his nerves stretched taut since the moment he'd first discovered that the steadying grip of stone he'd reached out for wasn't real. But in reality, he was tired, pissed off, and apprehensive, and that slowed his reaction time just long enough for him to miss the flicker in the air.

And then in the next second, her wickedly gleaming scepter was bearing down on them, and Elika stood in its path.

He didn't stop to think, even as his own instincts told him he was moving too slowly. All he knew was that he reached out, whether to ineffectually block or pull her from danger, he wasn't quite sure. But then before him, Elika moved blindingly fast, her own magic coming up to deflect. And then the scepter snapped back like a whip and came for him.

His sword was only half-drawn. The blow caught him across the chest and sent him flying backwards, sent stars dancing across his eyes and shooting blazes of pain underneath his ribs. He staggered, raised himself to his elbows, and fell again. His vision blurred as an inarticulate cry shattered his ears, and for a moment he wasn't sure who it came from. And then there was a bright blaze of blue that penetrated even his dimming vision, and his sword was fully naked in his hand before he knew it.

Just in time. He reached up by instinct as a figure stumbled over him and bore down, her slimy lips drawn back in a snarl. He kicked forwards and thrust at the same time, and the scepter slid screeching all the way down steel until it clattered against the hilt. Against the pain, his muscles reared back and threw her. And suddenly the weight on his chest was gone, and there was a hand in his, pulling him roughly upwards.

"Can you fight?" her voice was panicked, desperate, and he realised hazily that only concern could produce a sound like that. And concern meant...

He smirked. His vision cleared. His swagger returned. "'Til my last breath," he promised, and then coughed. Something hard and painful slammed against his ribs at the sudden jerk, and he winced. "I hope that wasn't it."

The Concubine swayed back into view. "Hmm..." she chuckled viciously. "Weak!" And then she struck again, lightning fast, towards the girl at his side. But this time he was ready. Mind clear, the pain in his ribs only enhancing his pissed-off state, the Prince coolly waited. And then as the scepter keened through space, almost grazed air, his sword came up like a snake. The Concubine shrieked as it penetrated, recoiling back as if he'd slapped her. He smirked viciously and followed up with another strike. The Concubine howled, and then blackness began to fill her face, her eyes, reaching out in hideous strands to slap at him.

He still wasn't thinking. It still wasn't conscious. Only the denial was. "Elika!"

She was there. A deadly, dangerous smile on her face that brought out the wicked gleam in her eyes. Swinging forth with a fistful of sapphire, she struck again. And then he moved forth, and they danced their steps around the retreating Concubine until finally she snarled to a stop.

"Enough!" she cried, swinging her scepter. Something black issued from its tip, and then there was a suspension in time, a hideous one-second nightmare as something horrific flashed before his eyes. _A stone-arced room, a body lying twisted on the floor, Elika dead. _It was enough to make him step back, and that was enough to give her the time to summon the last of her strength and look down on them coldly.

"You would not listen," she hissed at him. "Your past is nothing." She turned contemptuous eyes to Elika. "The dream is dead."

It sounded with terrible finality, and then she was gone. He was left panting, clutching his ribs, inanely wondering what illusion the Concubine had sent Elika to make her step back. There was a shock on her face that he was sure mirrored his own, and for a moment he felt a terrible despair grasp at his guts.

_What if... what if that wasn't a lie?_

He shook his head. Took refuge in sardonicism. "You know what? I'm beginning to feel sorry for Ahriman. I mean, he's been trapped with _that_ for a thousand years?"

He didn't question the sudden ache he felt in his stomach when she didn't turn to acknowledge him, didn't even smile. Instead, she walked towards the center of the Fertile Ground like a dead woman, and the paleness of her skin was only accentuated by the blue light as she healed.

He leant backwards and frowned, even as the Spire was reclaimed from the Corruption around him. The Concubine had gotten to her somehow. She had to have. There was no other explanation for the haunted look on her face, the vacancy where the sparking life he'd grown to associate her eyes with should be. The frown on his face deepened as she stumbled to the ground, exhaustion making it worse. He stepped forwards awkwardly to meet her.

"Hey, what she said about the dream being dead..."

Elika stood up abruptly. "She's right. The dream of this place is past."

He didn't know how she could sound so strong, when it was clear from her haggard expression and her fumbling step that she was exhausted yet again. A sudden, intense fear gripped him, and he moved to support her. "You mean you're giving up?"

_You can't give up. Not you. Not Elika. Not the woman I barely know..._

She shook her head. "No. Ahriman will be stopped. But not for the past."

The relief that flooded him at the thought was unbidden and unreasonable, but it was there. He didn't stop to think of its ramifications. "You'd better not give up," he muttered. "There's no way you'd look so good covered in Corruption and spouting stuff about Ahriman."

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. Freezing with sudden horror, he watched as she turned around slowly, her hand on her hip. The only thing that saved him was the tiny smirk on her face, and the receding paleness of her skin. "I look good, huh?"

He rolled his eyes. "Oh don't tell me that you didn't know. I've never met a beautiful woman who didn't know she was beautiful."

She stepped towards him. As he looked into her eyes, he forgot, briefly, how to breathe. "And I've never met a man who used flattery unless he wanted something," she challenged. "And don't think I forgot, or didn't hear. You called me 'pretty' before as well."

He snorted, discomfort crawling all over his skin. "You have such a suspicious mind."

She smiled. "No, I'm just nowhere near as naive as you think I am."

His eyebrow shot up before he could stop it. "What makes you think I think you're naive?" he countered.

It was her turn to snort. "Oh please. It's not like you need a sign or anything. I can _tell_ what you think."

_Sweet darkness, I hope not. _"Oh really? What am I thinking?"

Her mouth opened. And shut. He smirked. Her mouth opened again. "You're thinking that there's no way I could know some of the things you know, since I'm just a sheltered little princess from a sheltered little city."

_Actually, I'm trying very hard not to think about how much I want you right now._ "That's not a thought," he said lazily. "That's a fact."

She narrowed her eyes. "I'm _not_ as naive as you think I am."

He was enjoying himself far too much. Perhaps it was because subconsciously, he'd decided to happily submerge himself into denial. "Yeah? Prove it."

Her eyes widened, and then narrowed again. And then she smiled, and he regretted the challenge. "Fine. So how little of a man _are_ you?"

It took him a few seconds, and then it hit. "Ohhh, Princess. You're treading on dangerous ground there."

Her smile, just like a predator, sharpened. "Am I really?"

Despite his confidence, despite his ego, he suddenly felt absurdly uncomfortable. The right words were in his throat, he knew it - words that could keep the mask, keep the swagger, keep it light. _I'm big enough to matter, Princess. Let's leave it at that. _But at the same time, he knew she wasn't the only one treading on dangerous ground. Even if she had any idea of what she was really talking about, it certainly wasn't the right time or place to have this conversation. _There should be candles. Maybe chocolate. No! Back on track, boy..._

He cleared his throat. "Yes, yes you are," he pulled himself straight, tried to look dignified. "Now I'm going to go figure out how we get down from here."

He turned, and walked away, trying to reassure himself._ That didn't sound like a retreat_, he told himself. _No. It certainly did __**not**__ sound like a retreat, not at all.._.

Her laughter followed all the way behind him.

* * *

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A/N - I'm so sorry for the delay! Time just got ahead of me again, but I did manage to get this done to at least get something in before Uni crashes down on me again. I hope you enjoyed!

Also, just to let you know I've heard from quite a few of you that you're eager to see an Alchemist arc as well, specifically the part where the Prince gets Corrupted. I have to say, great minds must think alike because I've been contemplating such a oneshot for a while. Hopefully that will be forthcoming after I finish with the Concubine!

And more importantly, thank you all again. I can't tell you how much your comments, support, and feedback is appreciated. Let it suffice to say that you make all the crazy stress of writing while trying to live, study and work worth it. In fact, you go one better and make me wander around all day with a smile as well.

From the bottom of my heart, thanks to all of you. :D

-Shadowhawke


	9. Judgement Day

**Judgement Day**

_Apologies in advance..._

_

* * *

_The first thing he saw was light, and for a moment he was overwhelmed.

Light. _Light_. After the months in intermittent darkness... months that felt like years, there was finally pure, constant _light_. Unbidden, he stepped back in awe, his lips curving infinitesimally and his soul drinking it in. Light. He felt its alien beauty dive into him, surrounding him in warmth he hadn't felt for weeks. It was beautiful, so beautiful...

And then, abruptly, he regained himself. The Prince dropped his outstretched hands back to his sword hilt, tightened his reverent stance back into cautiousness. And following everything else, the eyes that had been widened in wonder slittted down again, partially to keep the too-brightness from searing the rest of his vision, and partly because of the cold that had swept into his thoughts.

Because of _course_ there was light. The knowledge and the ramifications behind it turned the soft smile on his face into a cynical sneer. Yes, of course there was light. If there hadn't been, then there would have been darkness. There would have been monsters, there would have been death, there would have been Hell. Instead of the pristine sacredness of the white hall and the gardens, there would have been the dank darkness of Corruption, which would mean that they'd have followed the trail to a dead end _again_.

Not that that was likely. The text they'd found amidst the Corrupted ruins of Babylon, that once beautiful, bustling city, had been the most trustworthy they'd found. More valuable than any gold or silver he'd come into contact with, the ancient book had unleashed a wealth of information even besides what they'd been looking for. Information that he'd glanced over briefly, and then nights later continued to bother him until he realised something. Realised something he probably should have thought of before, when they were both trying to wrack their brains over how to deal with an unleashed Ahriman in a world with no more unCorrupted Temples, no more untainted Trees.

Realised something so hideously probable that he hadn't dared speak of it to her in the days they'd spent finding this place for fear. Fear of her, of himself, of the dead end that was unlikely, but still...

The fact that there'd even been that possibility brought a scowl to the Prince's face, _What would have happened? _he wondered._ Maybe... Maybe I'd have given up hoping, maybe I'd have given trying, and then __**she'd**__ give up on __**me**__..._

As if his mind had summoned her, he heard a faint scrabbling behind him. "You know, it'd be great if you could move _sometime_ this century. Or at least give me a hand."

The Prince blinked, turned, and extended his arm almost automatically into the dark tunnel he'd only just clambered out of. Dirt-specked fingers reached out of the mire of blackness to grasp his, and he pulled.

For a moment, the scene felt vaguely dreamlike before his eyes. They'd been running in a world of half-shadows for so long (when had he lost count? Ah well, he was sure that _she_ hadn't. He'd ask her sometime after all of this... on a day when he was feeling magnanimous enough to hear her berating, and presuming they both came out alive). And Elika (_his princess_, the thought came treacherously, but he pushed it away) was not a creature made for the shadow. So when she came out of the darkness and into the light, he allowed himself a second to soften. Under the grime, blood, exhaustion and sweat, she was still the most beautiful thing he'd seen in years.

He hoped, faintly, that she'd be the last thing he saw. Because he was on shaky ground, he knew that. The book had told him the facts, but he'd had to come up with the game plan - one he could never tell her even if telling her wouldn't ruin its effectiveness. Although he wasn't even sure if effectiveness was the right word, because the way he saw it, there was a very good chance he'd end up dead or obliterated or whatever happened when a God got angry.

But it was their only chance.

"Took your time," she muttered, dusting herself off.

The softness transformed itself into a wry grin. Maybe it was the light, most probably it was the proper sight of her again, but somewhere deep inside him, the little part of him that was still left untouched exulted quietly in a rare flush of truth. _This is why I love her._ "Don't worry, Princess," he drawled. "I think we won't need to be waiting much longer."

She blinked, and then looked up. "What do you mea...?"

Her words faded away, and he watched with a sense of detachment as awe seeped itself into her eyes, as she too realised the impossible, the miraculous, the paradisical.

The light.

The Prince frowned. There was a look of blind wonder on her face now, as ecstatic and exalted as the anguished peace that had twisted her features so long ago, in a now dark grove beside a now dead tree. The thought darkened his frown into another scowl. Funny how that image seemed burned into his eyelids. She didn't know, but every time he slept he saw it, and that was why he was never sorry. That was why he never backed down. That was why he never went mad, because what else could you do as a man who'd damned the world?

What else could you do as a man who knew something about her God that she didn't know, and was about to do something so catastrophically and monumentally risky that he didn't even want to think about it?

The Prince cleared his throat harshly. "Come on," he said abruptly. "We're not done yet."

She didn't seem to hear him. Her head moved, drinking in the view around them; the polished, pure marble interspersed with fountains, the gentle sapphire lights bobbing in the air playing over the clear water. In perfectly ordered, symmetrical areas, small squares of garden created their own little haven, scenting the air with a sweet, innocent fragrance that might have moved a different person with the same experiences to gulping, heart-wrenching tears.

Neither of them were different people. Elika closed her eyes briefly and inhaled, and then opened them, her irises suspiciously bright. And with bitterness winning him over, the Prince ignored the sights that had so dazzled him moments ago and directed his gaze instead to the path ahead of them. Because there was a path - perfectly kept, perfectly smooth, and it led all the way up to a distant crystal throne, around which the light shone so brightly he couldn't see the occupant.

Not that he needed to.

The Prince hardened his mouth and stepped. "Elika."

The new, edged tone of his voice was enough to bring her out of it. Elika snapped to attention, her eyes refocusing on the path ahead. And her jaw actually dropped.

It would have been cute, he thought, except for the word that followed right afterwards.

"Ormazd," she breathed, and as the sound rung in his ears he wasn't sure whether it was a curse or a prayer. His mouth hardened further and he moved forwards.

"Yeah, the guy we came all this way to see," he said caustically. "So let's get a move on, shall we?"

She started walking like it was somebody else's decision, her normal determined, graceful step broken up into unsure, faltering movements. He fell into place beside her, nerves tightening with every foot. The water of the numerous fountains lining the path played like music meant to soothe, but its foreignness in the damned world he'd grown accustomed to scraping a survival in made him edgy.

The thought turned his lips downward in a dry smirk. Ah, the irony. Over the last months, they had climbed towers, ran up columns, soared through rotting cities. Over the last weeks, they'd somersaulted over nothingness, swung from the incorporeal, depended on a dream of what should be. And they'd done all that looking for the being seated in a hundred feet in front of them, and now suddenly it seemed to be the hardest thing to walk down a path towards Him.

Him. Ormazd. The fairytale, the bedtime story, the legend that had smashed into his life with the subtlety and destruction of a booby-trapped ruin. The incomplete myth that had nagged at him, bothered him, and then rendered him speechless when he'd finally realised its implications.

The myth which was the reason why he was walking up the path now, and why he wanted and didn't want to finish the journey.

But he did. They did. Inch by inch, step by step, until they were at the foot of the throne and close enough to see the pillar of shining light. And then beside him, he heard Elika's reverent whisper.

"_Ormazd."_

* * *

For a moment they were blinded, and then the being, the Light moved. Before their eyes, it shifted, it formed, and then there was a man sitting there, or something like a man. Perhaps it could have even passed for one, if it hadn't been for the holy nimbus around Him, and the pale blue sheen to his skin. That, and the impossible beauty, the impossible cleanliness in this rotting world.

And then the God, the Being sat forwards. "Elika."

The name came out like a blessing, a benediction, and he felt rather than saw her shiver with the power of it. "The Princess of my people, the most faithful of my servants. Welcome, and do not be afraid."

Her breath left her in a rush. "Ormazd," she said again, and then deliberately bent down on her knees. And as if that sign of physical surrendering opened the floodgates, the rest came out. "We searched so long, we tried so hard, I'm sorry I failed you, I..."

"No," He said, and the single syllable was enough to make her stop. "No, never think that. I've been watching you, my child. Watching you all along. And you never failed me. Your whole life you have done your duty, and until the last chance, you were ready and you _did_ give your life. No... what happened after was the work of another..."

He turned, but the Prince was already there, leaning casually against one of the grand marble columns that held up the roof. There was a cold anger to his muscles that no one else could see, and it manifested in the edge to his lazy smirk.

It was time. Time to put the game plan into action, time to rely on suspicion and an ancient piece of paper, time to do something so monumentally stupid that he'd never even contemplate it if it wasn't for the fact it was the only chance they had.

Yes. It was time.

"So," he drawled, raising one leg to scuff his boot against the floor. "Nice place you got here. Beautiful, isolated, protected by killer traps and pure darkness underneath its facade. I always wondered where Gods went when they wanted to run away."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Elika jerk in shock. But for once, his attention wasn't focused on her. He met stare for stare coolly as Ormazd's brow furrowed.

"You do not know, and so I will not punish you," the God said calmly. "But this is the Hall of Judgement. _My_ Hall. You would be wise to watch both your words and your heart."

The Prince pushed himself off the column. The knowledge he'd carried hidden with him since he'd left the ruins of Babylonia poisoned his tone. "The Hall of Judgement, huh? I love hypocrisy."

Elika moved before Ormazd could speak again, one hand jerking at his shoulder and the other blazing with magic at her side. "What are you doing?" she hissed. And then she turned back. "I'm sorry, my Lord. He doesn't know what he's talking about..."

Ormazd opened his mouth, doubtless to placate her again, but the Prince stopped him. Eyes stony, he deliberately crossed his arms and shrugged off her hold. "Oh, don't I? Why don't you listen a little harder, Princess?" And then to the God. "You've been watching her, have you? Watching us? So you saw what you had to go through. You saw what she had to do, how hard she fought. And you just sat here?"

The God was silent. Elika tugged on his elbow this time, hard enough to break his hold on himself. A little part of him, the detached part of him, noted that she was digging in hard enough to leave bruises later. The rest of him, the doubtlessly suicidal part that had come up with this plan in the first place, ploughed on ahead. "How were we, Ormazd? Entertainment enough?"

"You idiot! Shut up!" There was something burning into his skin now, a white-hot pain, and he vaguely registered that the fingers gripping his arm were alight. But before them, Ormazd still sat unmoving, and he focused through his blurring eyes on that frozen visage.

"No. No, I'm saying my part." He was angry, he was unstoppable, he was probably going to die. He wondered briefly whether the world he'd created - the dark, nightmarish world of endless slaves and terror, Corruption and Corrupted, had made him so jaded that he would welcome the end.

_I would. I would have. If it hadn't been for her, I would have walked into the abyss long ago, because when life stops being life and becomes a twisted, sickened image of it, then I don't want to live it. If it hadn't been for her..._

That was a dangerous, dangerous line of thought, and the realisation disoriented him. Briefly, he turned away form the God to her, and what he saw almost killed him. Shock, horror, incredulity, rage. She was going to hate him for this, if she didn't already. He knew deep down that he'd done something that was never meant to be forgiven, but it was far too late for nonexistent regrets. Besides, he was angry too. For her.

For her. And for himself, because no matter how twisted he got, he knew he was and always would be a selfish bastard. With the knowledge of myth behind him, the knowledge of what he had to do, the Prince straightened his back and tightened his jaw. "No, I'm saying my part because it needs to be said. Didn't you just hear him, Princess? He's been watching us. Aren't you going to ask why he never helped? Why he never stepped in? Why he let the Fertile Grounds fail and you die and your Father slither into Corruption?" He twisted back to Ormazd. "Well?!"

_I've seen children scream, I've heard mothers die, I've touched good men's corpses. I've looted burnt homes to survive, I've watched great cities sink into Corruption, and I've felt sick, sick, sick..._

Ormazd didn't move. The Prince couldn't stop himself. Whatever was holding the God back now, arrogance, complacency, aloofness... he just didn't care anymore. "You _saw_ us!" it came out like a hoarse cry, a vengeful accusation. "You saw the places we've been while we searched for you, saw the depths this world has sunk to! You saw her turn away, saw her exhaustion, saw the pain on her face as she died again! _You saw us and you did nothing!_"

Ormazd's blank face twitched, and that was just enough to bring him out of it. Pushing back the growl in his throat, the Prince shifted unconsciously into a battle stance. At that moment, he didn't feel the burning hand at his elbow, the too-bright light around him. No, all he knew was the Being in front of him, the self-hatred and external loathing within, the frustration and disgust that this was the only way he could think of. And as immortality peered into the soul of a mortal, the mortal let all of it bleed into his gaze.

_You let her die. You let her die. You let her __**die**__._

And Ormazd moved.

The Prince felt his breath catch in his throat, the anger diluting his blood freeze in his veins. Surely this was it now - the time when his gamble would either pay off or send him into oblivion. Leaning forwards, the God's light shone even brighter. "You do not judge me, mortal."

The Prince laughed. It was a harsh, rasping laugh, like the dry, gasping chuckle of someone who was almost dead. "Why not? I've fought your battle for months now. I think I get something."

Ormazd's eyes flickered. "You unleashed Ahriman into the world. You are lucky I did not destroy you when you walked in."

The Prince laughed again. It was not a pleasant sound. "I unleashed Ahriman? Well, maybe. But at least I _did_ something. Something _right_."

Elika was making inarticulate noises. Or she was silent. He couldn't quite tell, there was a ringing in his ears. Knowledge and a horrible suspicion. That was all he had based this gamble on, but now he was sure he was right. And that knowledge made him sick.

In front of him, Ormazd's lips thinned. "Princess Elika died doing her duty."

His blood seethed. "Duty?" the Prince hissed. "_Duty_? She died doing your dirty work!"

The accusation echoed down the hall. The hedged guess, the suspicion was finally out. Ormazd recoiled, then stilled. And in the time that passed as those words hung in the air, there was a horrible state of disbelief, of non-being.

And then it was broken. Ormazd collected himself and stared down from the throne. "You don't know that."

The Prince's smile was dagger-sharp. "Don't I?" He was sure now, so sure it hurt. "You know, it's a funny thing. Sometimes when you're on the trail of someone, you find out more about them than just their location. You find out untold stories, unknown facts. Enough to start piecing a pretty puzzle together."

He didn't register that Elika had let go, he only saw Ormazd's slight shake of his head as she readied herself to do something. The realisation passed briefly, and then he was back onto his target like a wolf. "Well?"

Ormazd's face was blank again. "Why did you seek me out?"

The Prince's lips pulled back into a grin. "Because I know you can fix this. Like you should have from the beginning."

The God blanched.

He blanched, but before he could say anything, Elika finally stepped forwards. From out of the corner of his eye, he saw how pale she was, how disbelief warred with confusion and disgust at him in her eyes. "My Lord, what is he talking about?"

Her tone made the question clear. _Why have you put up with this idiot for so long? _But Ormazd didn't answer immediately, and that sharpened the disbelief into incredulity. The Prince's nasty grin didn't falter. "You want to tell her, Ormazd? Or should I?"

The God paused, and then stirred back into regality, turning cold eyes upon him. "You unleashed Ahriman upon the world," he repeated. "And in doing so, you unleashed untold suffering. For that crime, there cannot be recompense."

"And that's the difference between you and me," he sneered. "I know what I did was wrong. I'm not trying to hide that. But you... if you won't tell her, I will." He turned to her, and this time a little bit of his soul did die. She looked at him as if he were the most repulsive thing in a world ruled by Ahriman, and it hurt so much he was surprised he didn't break.

But he didn't. "Here's the thing, Princess. That book we found gave us a few more pieces to the tale we heard as naughty children. Things like how Ahriman and Ormazd were more than brothers, more than Gods, more like..."

"Equals." Ormazd's voice cut in. The Prince turned back to him, stunned. _It worked._

Elika shifted uneasily. "What do you mean?"

The light around the God settled down onto his shoulders. "We are equals. Equal opposites. Even when Ahriman broke the balance and tried to bring evil on the world, we were equal."

The Prince couldn't resist. The God was still balking at the edges, he knew that. He could see it. The game wasn't over yet, but the flush of victory was there. "Equal in _everything_. Energy, power, being..."

Ormazd looked at him with a mixture of disgust and grudging respect on his face. "Yes."

"But how is that important?" Elika demanded, frustration carving her face. "I knew that already. What does this have to do with anything?"

The God faltered, and so the man stepped in. "It means that the first time round, when Ahriman lost it and tried to take over the world, Ormazd didn't have to wait until everything was almost destroyed. He could have ended it then and there."

Elika's eyes narrowed. He could almost see it as she realised what he was talking about, what he'd figured out, and the disbelief stood stark against the paleness of her skin. "Wait, you mean..."

"Yes."

It was a simple syllable, and it stopped her in her tracks. Ormazd sighed and sat back. "Yes. Two opposing, equal energies... had I met him face to face in the proper manner, we would have bled into one another, destroyed one another, cancelled each other out. The Tree..."

He fell silent, a silence which spoke volumes, and the Prince picked it up for him. His tone was quieter now, more neutral, the black rage gone, it's task done. "That's why it took so long, yeah? You were trying to find another way out that didn't end with you getting destroyed, and you finally found the Tree."

The God didn't have to say anything. The Prince suddenly felt exhausted, but he kept going anyway.

"But the Tree was only ever temporary, wasn't it? You knew that. You knew Ahriman couldn't be contained forever. And that's why you ran away."

Ormazd flinched, but didn't deny it. "I am the God of Light," he said quietly. "My nature is not in destruction, not even of myself."

Elika's hand reached up to cover her mouth, then fell away. "I..."

Ormazd took a deep breath, and the light around Him swirled. "Thousands of years," He whispered. "Thousands of years I have sat and watched the bonds decay, watched as my brother worked his way loose, knowing that my time would come. Thousands of years watching my people decrease, forgetting their duty. Thousands of years watching fallible mortals fail," He turned a dark glance to the Prince. "If you couldn't even give up a little, why should I have to give up so much? Why should Ahriman and I die, when evil will continue on afterwards in the hearts and minds of humans? Is it not better he stay trapped and I stay present to watch, intervening and sending agents where they're needed? Is that not more _right_?"

The Prince jerked his thumb back in the direction they'd come from, out to the Corruption-eaten, stagnant remnants of the world. "Is _that_ right? When you knew the Tree was only temporary?"

Nothing.

"And you know what? Even if it is, I think you're wrong. And she's proof." Elika started next to him, but he ignored it, because to look on her now would spell his doom. "You've watched her. She's still proof that people exist who still know duty, who still know good, who'll go further than even the Gods to follow her godforsaken task." He summoned up strength and courage in a breath and ploughed on. Because it was all coming together now, it was coming, it was coming... "You said it yourself. Through it all, she never failed. But you failed her. And I failed her. So now I'm asking you to make it right."

There.

He slumped back, found the column he'd rested on previously conveniently behind him. That was it - the last piece he had, the last thing he'd planned out, the last move in the game he'd constructed.

That was it, and everything else was up to the Gods.

* * *

Ormazd was still for a long while. In the serenity of the Hall, and the silence broken only by the fountains, it seemed like a crime to speak. Elika stayed frozen in space, unsure of what to do with herself. The Prince stayed slumped against the column, spent. And the God sat and thought.

And then finally, when hope was beginning to turn into despair in his heart, Ormazd lifted His head, stared directly at him, and spoke.

"You know that you are no less a criminal for what I've done."

It was a statement, and so the Prince inclined his head in response and smirked darkly. "I know I'm damned. How about you?"

And amazingly, amazingly, the God laughed shortly. "I knew there was a reason I chose you," He shook his head wryly. "No matter how much I may regret it now."

He couldn't help it. The Prince stared, his jaw hanging open, and the God laughed again before He turned to Elika. The Prince didn't follow, too dazed, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the stunned surprise still on her face, the inability to accept, and he knew that Ormazd saw it too.

"My child..."

The God stopped, opened his mouth to start, and then stopped again. And then with a sigh, he dropped his hand to her shoulder.

"Make me strong," he said simply, and then the Light was spinning, it was shifting, and a whirlwind of pure energy built up around her, blazing ever brighter until it filled the cavernous Hall and blinded them. The Prince shielded his eyes, seeing an almost painful glow of white against his lids. And then Ormazd spoke, and he wasn't sure whether to cover his eyes or his ears as the God's voice rang out in his full power.

"My child. You have always gone above and beyond your duty. And for that, I leave you this gift. I will not ask you to use it well, for I know you will. Merely use it, and keep alive the memory that once, Gods did walk the world, so that humans might learn from their mistakes."

The words rung out like oceans, sounded like seas. And the light burned ever brighter... until it lessened. The Prince opened his eyes to see Elika swaying, and in a heartbeat he leapt to her, supporting her shoulders and lowering her to the ground. And then he looked up and felt the overwhelming presence of a God leaving.

And he didn't think.

He didn't reflect.

He just followed the last shreds of Light and ran.

Down the path, down the wall of the tunnel they'd climbed to get here, through the treacherous corridors they'd passed to get to the Hall in the first place. The fading Light passed ahead, sweeping out and neutralising the tainted darkness it met, leaving the cool black of an unpoisoned night behind. Out, out, until he reached the mouth of the cave that they'd entered what seemed like days ago, and gazed at the world in front of him.

And felt his jaw drop again in pure, unadulterated wonder.

Days, weeks, months had passed since Ahriman was released to the world. And the seconds had blurred into each other - the horrible hours of treading through semi-darkness, through tainted, Corrupted shadow, only the faint light of Elika's magic carving a path in the world. During the night it had been the worst - the moon had sickened behind a constant covering of blackened clouds, the stars withering away in the sky. But during the day it had been almost as bad; the sun hidden from view, the light filtering weakly through only enough to twist the world into half-shadows, a world where everything looked hopeless and there was just enough vision to see the horror that Ahriman had caused.

But now there was just the night. Untwisted, untainted, pure. The stars sparkled above, the moon bore silver witness to a land now cleansed - a land bare and barren of life, true, but a land also bare and barren of the Corruption that had killed everything over the last however long it had been. And that was enough. That was enough for him. Because the dirt left behind was rich, and he was sure there were still seeds, still drops of life, because already he could see glimpses of green pushing through, Ormazd's last gift.

And across the horizon, the sun was rising.

* * *

He did not cry. The wetness that dripped down his face was rain, he was sure of it. And the constant refrain in his head, (_It worked. It worked. I can't believe it, it worked_) was truly a victory song, not the incoherent mumblings of sheer disbelief. So when he heard her clear her throat behind him, him wiping his face was to clear his vision, not for any other reason.

Not at all.

Not that it did much. Because the second he turned around, he was met with a violent slam of magic and flesh combined. Elika's palm hit him full in the face and he fell backwards, gasping at the pain. And then she was standing over him, palm ablaze, that glare he loved pinning him down.

"Are you going to explain what the hell that was about?"

And he raised his eyes and saw her properly for the first time in what seemed like years. Saw in her in the true glory of the natural dawn. And he grinned crookedly.

"I thought it was pretty self-explanatory."

They'd fought with each other, fought together, long enough for him to tell exactly the moment she decided not to hit him again. Instead, she settled for settling her delicate, deadly foot on his chest. "Well why don't you self-explain, then?"

He couldn't help it. The crooked grin turned into a full-blown one, even as everything else within him held caution in check. _God, I love her. Even though I can't have her. _"Fine. After I read the fuller version of the myth, I put two and two together. And I realised that if I was right, and Ormazd really had just been running away for all this time, then he'd need a little more than just persuasion to do something about it."

She thought about it for a moment, frowned when she couldn't find anything wrong with it, and dug in her heel a little more. He winced, but she ignored it. "And you didn't tell me... why?"

He arched an eyebrow. "You think it would have worked if you'd known? In case you didn't realise, Princess, I wasn't entirely sure myself. Not to mention that you'd have probably let me fall to my next death if you thought I was making up unfounded lies about your God, right?"

She pursed her lips. "I would have believed you if you'd told me why."

His eyebrow crept up further. "Yeah, sure..."

He decided against what he'd been about to say as she ground her heel in just that little bit more. "Anyway, if you'd known it wouldn't have worked. You saw Him in there. It was your faith, your love, and then your realisation that pulled him over the line." _Nothing like the guilt trip you get knowing your worshipper is more holy than you. _

She raised her own eyebrow. "Me."

He smiled wryly. "What can I say, Princess? Your damned purity can shame a God of Light to his destiny."

She considered that for a moment, pressed down once more firmly for good measure, and then stepped off. He crawled up onto his elbows, gaze just at the level to see her cross her arms. "Flatterer."

He chuckled. "It's not flattery where it's true now, is it? And we just saw how true it was."

She didn't discount it. Instead, she gazed out to the horizon, drinking in the remade world. They stayed like that for a while, him on the ground collecting himself, her on her feet surveying a rebirth she never thought she'd see. And then finally, she spoke again.

"Why?" she asked.

He blinked and looked ahead of him. "Why what?"

She turned and stared down. "Why aren't you looking me in the eye?"

He shrugged, turned away, too drained for subterfuge. Besides, he owed her too much to lie to her now. Not that he ever expected to repay the more than mountainous debt. "'Cos I know I don't deserve it."

He heard her sharp inhalation, heard the whistling of air through her lungs and out her mouth, and revelled quietly in the knowledge that she was alive, and so was the world. "Is that why you've been so distant? Keeping secrets? Playing with your words?"

Slowly, painstakingly, he stood up. And then he took his own deep breath and raised his gaze to meet her full in the eye. "I know you haven't forgiven me, Princess." She opened her mouth and he hastened ahead, not wanting to a misunderstanding. "And don't worry. I don't expect it. Ormazd was right about one thing. I can't recompense what I did, and..."

He sucked in another breath. In the face of her, in the face of Elika, it was hard to listen to himself. "Fine. He was right about more than one thing. I can't recompense what I did, and you... you're something else."

Her eyes were like clouded crystal. Every word hurt, but he kept going. "You're something different. Something special. Someone who can move Gods and move worlds. Someone..."

He squeezed his eyes shut in pain. God, he wanted her. Needed her. Loved her. But he'd realised long ago that fairytales and bedtime stories were more complex than they first appeared, and that some just didn't happen. But it was hard against the memories. Against the knowledge of how far they'd come from when they'd first met in a harsh desert canyon - a Princess by blood and a Prince of Thieves. He took another shuddering breath and felt it knife through his lungs. _You've got an eternity of debt to pay, might as well start now. _

He snorted. _Trying to play the hero is getting to me_, he thought wryly to himself, but then it was true. And so was his conviction, because Elika would never have a criminal. Would never have a monster. Would never have anything like him, and deserved more.

_But I love her..._

The muscles in his back stiffened, and then relaxed. After everything they had survived together, after their beautiful, intricate dance, she deserved honesty.

Laboriously, he picked up his thoughts, opened his eyes, and was hit by the beauty of her soul shining through her eyes. And somehow, somehow the sight was enough to unblock his throat.

His voice dropped to a low, caressing murmur, where every syllable rung like a bell with truth. "Someone who never gives up. Who always tries." It hurt. "Who... who is so amazing I can't even begin to do you justice."

He took another breath, because he needed it. "And that's right. It's right. You've got the world now, Princess. The world as it should be. And when you wrap your head around that, then you're going to go off and discover it, and I'm going..."

There was a problem there. He furrowed his brow. He'd never planned this far ahead. Quickly, his tired mind came up with something that sounded good. "And I'm going to try fix up my mess. Like I should. Alone."

The last word came out like jagged knives over his throat, and he fell silent from the shredding agony of it. Huh. Perhaps this was true irony. He never thought he'd live through the confrontation with Ormazd, but he was beginning to suspect he'd die here and now. He knew he was being stupid. Monumentally stupid. But again, he also knew it was right, and something deep in his soul was annoyingly fastened to that thought.

Now all she had to do was cooperate. Leave. For once, not to be herself and fight, challenge, win. To just walk away and leave him to maybe walk off a cliff...

Her eyes narrowed. "You must be joking," she said flatly. "A graverobber, a world destroyer with morals?"

The words slammed into him, and he shrugged painfully. "Just calling it like I see it, Princess."

It was slight - so slight that he might have missed it had he not been looking her full in the eye. But something in her cheek twitched, and then her face merged from hardness into inscrutability, and for some strange reason the sight made his heart leap. "You know, you're taking an awful lot for granted."

Unbidden, his heart leapt into his mouth. _What on earth does that mean? _His head was spinning, his mind gone. So many months of living on the run, of relying on wits and brains to keep them alive and in the game, and now that imminent physical danger was gone. Instead, he was now caught in a battlefield of a different kind, and for once he wished they could just talk straight to each other. There was a strange glint in her eye, and he would have traded his soul to know what it meant.

"Oh yeah?" he asked cautiously, daringly. "Well if I'm wrong, what will you do then?"

It was a challenge and she knew it. It was a challenge and he knew it. Suddenly, the drained feeling was gone, and he drew himself up again, cocked out his chin again with pride. Come what may, he was a man with a sword and an empty horizon, and he could survive whatever this new world threw at him. Because it was back to normal. Back to the banter and the fire between them, even though she knew every black corner in his soul and every dark patch in his heart. Back to a land of fairytales and miracles, even though it was devoid of Gods. Back to a delicious, creeping suspicion that felt vaguely like hope...

And across from him, she was still for a moment, and then a steely, beautiful resolve settled on her face.

"Live," she replied simply. And then she reached up and kissed him.

* * *

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A/N: Firstly, I'd like to apologise to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. The reviews were treasured, absolutely wonderful and brought a massive smile to my face, a bounce to my step and a tingle in my typing fingers, but I unfortunately haven't had the time to get back to each and every one of you. Rest assured that I'll do that soon, thanks so much again!

Secondly, I just wanted to say that this piece was unfortunately the product of five crazed hours after inspiration seized me and time ran away from me. So I'm sorry if it didn't make as much sense as it was meant to or if it felt off or strange or weird - I'd like to be able to blame it on the fact that it's now almost 2 in the morning, but it really was my fault and my choice in subject matter so I won't.

So I hope that you enjoyed it, but I promise I'll try something more coherent next time. Thanks so much for your patience, your readership, and your time. I can't tell you how much I appreciate each and every one of you. Thanks again, and again, I hope you accept both my humble apologies and my promise.

-Shadowhawke


	10. Interlude: Reach

**Reach**

Sometimes, she remembered the first time. When they'd met. When this whole story began.

The canyon had been hot with sun and dust, her newly revived body slick with sweat and grit. His appearance been just another shock in those traumatic hours, those minutes where her heart had felt as though it would break her ribs. And not just because she was running.

It was because she was running from her father. Her _father_. And then, to top off everything, he'd ordered his men to kill an innocent stranger.

Sure, she knew how 'innocent' he was now. But then, it had been different. Then, everything had felt like it was her fault and she couldn't just stand by while he fell. And so without thinking, she had leapt after him, into the abyss, and reached out her hand.

Now, as she surveyed the destruction around her, surveyed Ahriman's world and felt the man who'd caused it standing beside her, she wondered what would have happened if she'd known this future then. She wondered if, instead of reaching for him, she would have let him die.

She wondered if it would have mattered.

* * *

Sometimes, he spent the night shaking. Nine months of Ahriman could do that to anyone, even the strongest. And he _was_ strong, she knew that. Had depended on it. So whenever she felt the tremors shiver through the single traveling blanket they were forced to share, she never failed to curl closer to him in her sleep. And he would lean into the touch as if it were a lifeline, as if the crook of her fingers was all that kept him from plummeting.

Sometimes, it was. And when they woke up in the morning, it was to her flaming face and his drawling grin. But she never forgot how right it felt even while she slapped him off her.

* * *

Sometimes, she almost had enough of him.

It would be little things, little triggers that would set her off. A misplaced comment, perhaps. Or even just the look of his skin in the faded light. His tan had long paled, squeezed of colour by the unending night. She hated it, him, and herself.

So she would hiss at him. There was no room for screaming - not unless she felt suicidal enough to bring a horde of Ahriman's soldiers down their throats. So instead, she would speak quiet words that dripped poison down his face.

And when she was done, he would still have that hard, nasty smirk on his face that made it look like he was invulnerable.

Even thought both of them knew he wasn't.

And at those times, the gap between them was so wide she felt she could never reach across it.

* * *

Sometimes, she contemplated dropping him.

They would find a long lost plate somewhere, glowing brightly in a twisted sea of shadow. Or the darkness would hide a vein of crumbling rock, and his fingers would scrabble at air. Those were the times that she sometimes wished she could let it end. Let him fall. Let Ahriman swallow him whole.

But she never did. Because even while the tantalising image of him disappearing played behind her eyelids, her heart would beat its wings against her throat of its own accord. And the squeezing, the ache wouldn't stop until he was safely within her grip and back on the ground.

And so she always reached for him. Even when she told herself she didn't want to.

* * *

Sometimes, he was hurt. And sometimes, it was her fault.

This time, the Corrupted had delivered a vicious backhand, sending decay splattering all over the battlefield. He'd ducked, but she had committed too much to her swing. In the second that he realised her predicament, his duck had turned into a coiled leap. And the blow had passed to him, as he intended.

He'd crumpled. She'd let loose a hoarse cry. And then the rest of the fight had shrunk to seconds as she unleashed her fury, as she poured the bright, blazing light of her life into the ruins of what was once a person.

Still, it felt more like years had passed before she could slide to her knees in front of him, and cautiously reach out a tentative hand.

_Please, please. Please don't be dead. Please..._

His eyes had slurred open before her skin made contact. She'd pulled back her fingers as if his consciousness were a snake.

He was alive, and the sight of his crooked, surviving smirk reminded her that she hated him.

* * *

Sometimes, it would get too much for her.

The darkness. The fighting. The corruption. The stench. Her exhaustion. Her aliveness. Her hatred of him. She would crawl away from their single bedroll, the only thing they'd manage to salvage from the last town. And she would find a quiet place where she could sob until eyes blurred and shut out her existence.

At least, that's what she did until the night he found her. She'd felt the anger in his stride before she raised her head to see him - even while pouring out your misery, it was death to not be alert in Ahriman's world. He'd stood over her for a few minutes, as if now he'd found her and knew she was safe, he wasn't sure what to do with his hands.

A tiny, traitorous part of her had wished that he'd reach out for her. That he'd enfold her. But he hadn't. Instead, he'd turned sharply on his heel and walked back a few steps to give her privacy. And to keep watch for her, so that she could lose herself.

After that, the need to cry slowly drained away, leaving only a slight, nearly imperceptible ache. And thereafter, whenever she told herself that she hated him, that ache would feel a little more hollow.

* * *

Sometimes, the battles they fought were just draining. It was the knowledge that there was so much more to come that did them in. The understanding that the death of this one meant nothing, because there would always be more. Around the next corner, underneath the next ledge, beside the next location they sought. Everywhere they went in their search to defeat Ahriman, his soldiers and Corrupted stood in their way, and that made the brief, nasty tussles more exhausting than they should have been.

Not this time.

This time, she felt the blood quicken in her veins before they swirls of darkness even began to gather. Because this was the last. This was the last before Ormazd's Hall, this was the last before they unveiled the weapon that would end Ahriman forever.

Perhaps that was why when his bare hand reached for hers, this time she didn't pull back in disgust. Instead, she squeezed once. And in that second she gifted herself, she internally memorised the feel of his skin against hers; the creases and lines of his callused palms, the tenderness of his fingers. And after she'd committed them to heart, she let go, and they walked to the end together.

* * *

Sometimes, she looked back on those endless days and smiled.

Because it was funny. Funny how the first time they reached for each other was involuntarily, while he was dying.

Funny how the horrors of their world made a thief and a princess reach for each other in dream.

Funny how it took so long for them to do it awake.

* * *

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A/N - Greetings my dear, dear readers. Firstly, I just wanted to say sorry for taking so long with this - the last few weeks have been essays heaped on essays heaped on exam preparation, so I had to grit my teeth to squeeze this small drabble in. Hope it was worth the effort!

Secondly, thanks again to all of my lovely, lovely reviewers. You have no idea how bright you made my day shine - I'm so glad to know I'm not alone on this ride. I'm sorry I haven't responded to anyone yet - I shall be making my way through them slowly as my workload stress decreases. Thanks again!

Until the next time,

-Shadowhawke


	11. The Fine Spinning Line

**The Fine Spinning Line**

* * *

_There's a fine spinning line,_

_Between true love and hate,_

_And a thinner one still,_

_Between chance and fate._

_.  
_

_For when living seems certain, _

_And you know your own path,_

_You'll find fate conspiring,_

_To have the last laugh._

* * *

"I don't get it," she said.

Her voice hung thickly in the air, scented with blood. Around them, the Corruption hissed agitatedly, having swallowed the remains of the last Corrupted only seconds ago. She frowned. _It shouldn't still be here. Why is it still here?_

Her eyes flicked to him, as if searching for an answer. But by the stricken look on his face, it seemed that he had no clue either. He stood in the center of the stone platform, ten meters from the edge of the abyss holding Ahriman's birthplace, his naked sword still in his hand and prodding at the ground where the Corrupted had fallen, as if that might make their plan work.

Their plan.

Elika felt the slow dawning of horror begin to stir in her gut. What if they'd been wrong? If they'd put all their hopes in a dream? It had been four months since they'd found the prophecy, four months since they'd started the hunt to end every last hold Ahriman had on the Earth. It hadn't been easy. Besides fighting the incredibly powerful beings, bolstered by Ahriman's fear and desperation as he caught on to what they were doing, for every Corrupted they cut down, new ones would invariably spring to take their place as other humans succumbed to seduction. But after their tireless battle, at long last they'd found Ahriman's source of power, his birthplace, and destroyed the last Corrupted to sever Ahriman's link to the mortal realm, thereby ending his influence on Earth forever.

At least, that had been the plan. But now as they looked around them, they saw the Corruption still swarmed, as thick as ever, and Elika felt the sickening feeling of despair.

They'd been wrong.

He'd been wrong.

They'd lost their only chance a year ago, at a Temple.

A fist seized her heart, and Elika lowered her gaze. She couldn't bear to look at him. Not now. This entire thing had been his idea in the first place, and when they'd found the Prophecy, he'd taken it as proof that he'd done the right thing. That he'd been right to save her for his own selfish reasons, so that she could help end Ahriman's influence for good instead of merely sealing him away.

And now it was all for nothing, and the old hatred and feelings of betrayal returned. Elika squeezed her eyes shut to block out the blurriness.

_Your fault. Your fault. Your fault..._

Breath hissed between her teeth. She couldn't hold it inside any longer. She was about to call out when suddenly, he fell to his knees. And then, for a moment, the anger boiling through her blood changed to fear. His leg hadn't been good, ever since the third-last Corrupted had nearly bitten it off. Even now, it was still oozing with pus and blood. Had it all been too much for him? Was he...?

Her eyes focused, and then she realised that his fingernails were scrabbling desperately amidst the dirt and rock, as if he were searching for something. With something that couldn't possibly be relief, she started forwards eagerly. He was all right then. He was all right, and he'd found something.

"What is it?" she demanded as she got closer. "What are you doing?"

He didn't reply immediately. A look of intense concentration had stolen across his angular features, and his mouth was pursed. "I think... there are words under here. An inscription or something."

She peered down at what looked to her like mud and dirt, and flared forth her magic to clear it all away. He flashed a small smile to her out of the corner of his mouth, but she ignored it. Soon, both of them were crowded around the spindly cracks in the ground, cracks that seemed to be letters.

After about four seconds, she pulled back in shock. "I...I can't read it," she said dumbly. "It's like nothing I've ever seen before."

She expected him to snark back instantly, reminding her that she was the one with the royal, learned background and the library to match. But instead, a deep frown marred his handsome face, and her instant reaction was to want to smooth it away.

Not that she did, of course. She'd long stopped entertaining thoughts of killing him in his sleep or wreaking vengeance on his body, but that didn't mean that she'd forgiven him.

Or at least, that's what she told herself.

"Hey," she waved her hand in front of his face irritably. "I told you, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's not even a language."

One dirty, bloodied palm rose from the ground and gently pushed her arm away. "Oh, it's a language all right."

She stared at him. "You can read this?"

He looked up, just long enough to flash her a black grin. "I'm wounded, Princess. I thought we'd known each other long enough now for you to realise I'm not stupid."

She flushed. "I never said you were." she retorted. "But how... I've never seen this language before."

The shadow collected at the curve of his lips didn't fade. "Of course you haven't. You never were the type to frequent tombs now, were you?"

Her mouth gaped open, and then slowly clicked shut as her eyes narrowed. _Oh, you have got to be kidding me. _"You learnt this from grave robbing?"

He shrugged, and his eyes swept back to the ground. She couldn't help but miss their warmth. "What can I say? A few old books, a few old acquaintances. It's handy to know the language that tells you to beware of the curse on a place or the traps lying ahead."

_Unbelievable. _She shook her head, not sure whether to be horrified or impressed. "Fine then, learned one. What's it say?"

Suddenly, the smirk died from his lips.

Elika counted the space of a few heartbeats, and then frowned. He was saying nothing, silent. He wasn't talking. Wasn't laughing. Wasn't joking or smirking. Something wasn't right. She was sure of it. She felt it in her gut, and it twisted there like a cold blade.

She swallowed, and felt her breath rasp in her throat. "What is it?"

Still, he said nothing, and she felt the air dry in her lungs. Something was definitely not right. His eyes, normally alive and dancing even in the most nightmarish times. were dark. "Read it out," she commanded, her voice shaky.

He raised her gaze to meet her own, and her soul chilled under what she saw in there. "Are you sure?" he asked, oddly.

Her nerves had been stretched taut already, and she snapped. "Oh, for Ormazd's sake, just tell me what it is!"

He nodded, and then caught his lip lightly between his teeth. "Give me a moment then," he muttered, forehead creased. "Just need to translate..."

She felt the strangled urge to scream, and instead settled for clenching her fists till they blazed. He studied the strange text obliviously beside her, his sword dropped to the ground and forgotten. Finally he looked up again, and she felt her heart quicken.

He took a deep breath. "Ready?" he queried.

She shot him a murderous glare and opened her mouth, but closed it when he shut her off with a grim smile. "Oh be patient, Princess. Here it is."

He took another unnecessary breath and started.

"Of darkest nights your feet have trod,

And slipp'd in faith and hope ye go,

An trust in Light, an trust in your God,

As cut ye have the chains of Woe."

At first she had to struggle to understand him - his words and cadence were halting, and his voice seemed languid and strained against the dead, Corrupted air. But then as her heart rate slowed, she began to pick up exactly what it was he was saying.

"Is... is that the prophecy? A different form, but the same one that we've been following?"

The look on his face confirmed it, but what worried her was the tension that told her he wasn't done yet. And when his voice picked up again, and she heard the new words that they'd never heard before, her face turned ashen.

"And when the last link's done and gone,

Ye must seal yon blackest hole,

To end the Dark and bring the Dawn,

Sacrifice your tainted soul."

The last syllable fell from his lips like a caress. She sat back, mute. There was a meaning in those words that she didn't want to understand, and yet, deep inside, she had this sinking feeling...

Her eyes turned to him, blind and grasping. "Is there anything else?" she demanded, her voice shrill against the deadness of the world. "Anything?"

A soft, ironic grin decorated his face. "That's it, Princess. That's... it."

"No," she shook her head. "There must be something more. Something to explain... I..." she could hear the lie chattering in her throat, feel her mind constrict around something she didn't want to believe. "I don't understand."

He lifted his disbelieving eyes to her face. "Come on, Princess," he cajoled darkly. "You're many things, but you're not slow."

She shook her head, trying to fight down the resurgent taste of horror in her throat. "It's meaningless," she retorted shakily. "We don't even know if it's true, or who it's talking to."

The Prince stood up suddenly, abruptly. She saw his bad leg almost buckle against the movement, but then it held strong. Turning to face her, he extended his hand. "Want me to spell it out?" he asked, mock courteousness in his in voice.

She shook her head and pulled herself up. "There's nothing to spell. Some insane person wrote this down here centuries ago. Or maybe even the Corrupted before we came."

He gave her a long, searching look, and she felt like throwing a punch into that beloved and hated face. "Come on, Princess," he repeated in that same soft, cloaked voice. "The blackest hole's right next to us," he nodded at the abyss, Ahriman's birthplace not ten feet away. "We've severed the last damn link. And look here," he indicated himself in a broad, sweeping gesture. "One tainted soul, ready for appetisers."

Her jaw dropped. "You can't be serious!" She threw up her hands. "How do you even know that's what it means? How... it's not like your name's written there! I mean... 'tainted soul'... it's so vague it could be anyone!"

He shook his head. "I'm afraid some of that ancient language doesn't translate very well," he admitted wryly. "Let's just say that I'm certain enough, shall we?"

Her voice shook. "Read it out again."

He repeated his long, measured look. "I don't have to."

Elika clenched her fists. "Damn you," she hissed. "Read it out again!"

She wanted him to argue with her. To suddenly laugh and relax and tell her it was all some stupid, practical joke. But instead he tilted his head to the side, and gave her a crooked grin. "Why Elika," he murmured. "I didn't know you cared."

Something fiery and red, like an explosion, burst behind her eyelids. "Of course I care, you idiot!" she raged. "I care enough that you're standing there apparently believing some half-baked writing over common sense!"

His eyes flickered, and his voice dropped a notch. "I'm touched."

She resisted the urge to slap him. "I mean it," she said dangerously. "I'm not going to stand by while you do this. We're..." she took a deep, heaving breath. "We've gotten this far by being partners. By working on this together." _Because you refused to let me handle it. _

A tiny smile lifted his mouth. "Partners, huh?"

She opened her mouth, then shut it.

Partners. She hadn't thought about the word when it had come flying out of her mouth, but all of a sudden it seemed insanely appropriate. What else could she call them? They who had fought with each other, stood with each other, saved each other countless times over the last twelve months. Ever since the first nightmarish day, when they had saved and lost an ancient city between them in the space of a few hours. They who had fought since then, unwillingly on her part, then grudgingly, and then finally consciously, to rid the world forever of their greatest foe.

Partners. It sounded right, and so she lifted her chin and glared at him. "Yeah. And as your partner, I order you to stop being an idiot and help me look for the next Corrupted."

The smile faded. "Elika," he said, and her heart almost stopped at the sound of it. "There _are_ no other Corrupted. It's done. You know it is. Except for one last step."

Something close to hysteria seized her. "No! No it's not done!"

He gave her that strange look again. "Why are you so against this? I would have thought you'd be glad to be rid of me."

A void seemed to suck into her mouth, along with her breath. "Are you insane?"

He hesitated for a moment, and then the flicker of resolve crossed over his face and he took one sure, strong step towards her. Surprised, she started back, but he stepped again, and she almost forgot the limp as his hand came up to brush her chin. "Maybe," he admitted, his eyes searching hers. "But you haven't answered my question."

He was too close. She wanted to step back, but she couldn't. His gaze was too riveting, but more than that, she felt it too much. "I..."

And then he was kissing her. Long, hard, passionately. Elika felt fire flood her system as his arm came behind her, wrapped her close, and held her as he worked his magic. Soft lips traced their way down her collarbone, then up her neck and back to her mouth. Something light flicked at her teeth and sent the blood rushing through her veins. Gasping, she kissed back, thought fleeing as her own arms came up to encircle his shoulders, to pull him towards her and to feel his stomach melded against hers. And when they came up for breath, they leaned their foreheads gently against each other, it took her a whole minute to remember her half-spoken sentence.

She brushed her lips against his cheek, suddenly feeling like the biggest idiot in the world for rebelling against what she'd known for so long. "I... I can't lose you," she whispered against his skin. "I... I can't."

She couldn't see it, but she felt the muscles underneath his skin move into a broad, quiet smile. "I can't either," he admitted, and then smirked. "So now you know how it feels."

Something froze within her, and she pulled away. "No," she shook her head, insisted. "That was different. I knew what I had to do, and that it would work."

She gestured at the stone inscription, the other hand planted firmly on her hip. "We have no proof that this is real. For all we know, it could be a trick. And even if it wasn't, it's so vague that we can't be sure."

She felt strong, righteous, right. She stared at him as if daring him to challenge her in the face of everything they'd been through and what had just happened, but instead a veil slipped over his eyes.

"I love you," he said abruptly.

Elika felt her heart stop. "_What_?"

He tilted his head and regarded her, the odd smile back on his lips. One that she recognised as tender, beautiful, and heartrendingly real. "You heard me the first time."

She had no breath, no words. It was one thing to have the life kissed out of her, and to kiss it back in return. That particular fire had been building up between them for far too long. But it was another thing completely to dispense with the word games they'd spun around each other ever since the beginning and cut to the chase. She opened her mouth, not sure what to say, and then decided to solve the problem by stepping forward and sealing his lips with hers again.

And everything that she was, the pain, the denial, the sacrifice... it melted.

Into his body, into his embrace. The hard metal of his gauntlet dug into her back, but it only reminded her to pull him closer in return. But the instant she tightened her grip, she felt him tense, crush her to him for one more second, and then relax.

And then the next few moments were a blur. One second his hands were around her, holding her up as they made up for stupid, lost time, and the next second he'd brought her to the ground, softly, tenderly, pressing every inch of skin against his as if he was memorising her touch. She started against this new position, this different feeling, but then decided that she liked it. She could feel his pulse, his heartbeat against hers, his voice in her ear as he murmured again, "I love you," and for one moment, every dark nightmare that they'd lived in the last twelve months was washed away.

And then in the next second, was brought roaring back.

One moment they were holding each other, the next his free hand had snatched up his sword and pinned her shirt to the ground. And then he was gone, and she had never realised how fast he could run with a limp, and how short ten feet really was.

There was the sound of tearing cloth. There was the sound of a scream in her ears that she only dimly recognised as her own. There was only the interval of a few gasps between his leap into the abyss and hers, but this was no ordinary chasm where she could swoop down and save him, like she had a million times before. Instead, this time when she flew, dark clouds of Corruption choked her gaze, filled her lungs, and blurred her vision to his disappearing form. Feeling fire in her throat, she let the light rip from her body and carve a path down to him, driving away the darkness with her own purity. Down, down it reached, and she reached, and when she could see him clearly again, she felt success riot in her mind and she extended her arm to pull him up...

Just as he turned briefly, gazed up at her one more time with his gorgeous smile, and then let the darkness swallow him whole.

And her heart froze, and the clouds of Corruption exploded. Currents of ash twisted in the air, rippling from the force of the supernova of evil that he'd just fallen into. They caught her up in their thorny grasp, forcing her up and tossing her back onto the stone platform they'd dived off, and Elika landed in a heap, stunned and disbelieving.

_No._

_NO!_

She crawled to the edge, her limbs shaking under her. There was something foreign glowing from the abyss, something that took her shattered mind a moment to recognise as natural light. She stared at it for a moment, uncomprehending, and then turned around to see the ocean of Corruption dying away, leaving the fresh scent of untainted Earth behind.

She turned back, disbelieving. There was nothing. The chasm that had once been Ahriman's birthplace and the physical vessel for his taint was gone. Instead, a grassy ravine floated gently in the wind, the newly budding flowers of its slopes painting a picture of life that she'd almost forgotten. It was wild, riotous, but it was a garden, nature's garden, and the thought was enough to bring her back to when everything started.

Back to a long, long time ago, when she played and dreamed amidst fountains and desert trees, and her mother told her that someday she'd find a Prince.

Elika choked.

And then laughed.

And then wept.

And when the sun dawned an hour later, for the first time in a year, it dried the tears to scars on her smiling cheeks.

* * *

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A/N - Thank you all for waiting so patiently, and for being so wonderful. Your reviews are all much, much appreciated, loved, and inspiring. To everyone who asked for another Elika PoV, this one's for you... I hope you all enjoyed it.

I also must admit, I've never had feedback like this from my readers in all my previous stories. This makes me want to write more, write better, and reach further. Thank you all for sharing this with me and for playing such an integral role in my journey, and I only hope that I continue to live up to both your expectations and the game we love itself.

-Shadowhawke


	12. The Verdict

**The Verdict**

**

* * *

**

_Sequel to 'The Fine Spinning Thread'_

_

* * *

I don't get it, _he thought hazily.

The blackness was all around him, pressing in and sucking him dry. It felt cool and oppressive against his skin, completely different from the agonized shredding that had assailed him before.

_Zarathustra saw the visions of God…_

But what he didn't understand was why he was feeling anything at all. He was dead. Gone. He'd felt his heart tear from his chest at the look on Elika's face, and moments after that felt it physically rend for real. He winced briefly at the memory of the catastrophic, unbelievable pain and tried to sit up. It took a while to get every muscle coordinating again. Eventually, he managed to raise himself weakly to his elbows, and then to his shaking wrists. He stayed like that for a while, recovering from the exertion. Unseen in the dark and his blindness behind closed lids, the corner of his mouth quirked upwards. Funny. Two months ago he'd been skidding down rails, sliding down walls, and gracefully fighting monsters spawned from the deepest level of Hell itself.

Right now he felt like he could barely move. But move he did. There was something strange going on. The spindly text on the stone had been cracked and faded, and a few of the words had been unclear. But he'd sworn that the right translation of _yanmobeh _had not been just 'sacrifice' but 'utterly destroy'.

_Zarathustra saw the God, Ahura Mazda. _

And although he felt as weak as a newborn mule, he hardly felt utterly destroyed.

At that realization, a cold shred of fear stirred in his gut. What if he'd failed? What if he'd been the wrong guy? _Then again, a soul can't get much tainted than mine._

What if… what if it hadn't been the last part of the prophecy?

_No. _

It was that thought, and that thought alone that made him open his eyes. And when he did, another terror that he would never acknowledge awoke in his chest. Because instead of seeing nothing or nonexistence, he saw something he recognized all too well.

_Zarathustra saw Ormazd. _

He was on yet another stone platform, but unlike any he'd seen before, it hung motionless in space over an unfathomable abyss without any support. It extended about thirty feet, a crooked rock disc in the air, and then narrowed out to a precipice. And from there, the columns and arch forming the entrance to a bridge shrouded in mist stood like the entry to a cemetery, solemn and still.

Waiting.

_Zarathustra saw Ahriman._

The Prince started to laugh.

It was not a happy laugh, or even an ironic one. Instead, it skirted the edge of hysteria, thinning out his breath to the boundary of nothingness. This was it. The universe's final joke on him. And boy, was it the worst punchline he'd ever dreamt of.

He staggered to his feet. His strength was still nonexistent, but something else was plucking at him now, drawing him forwards. If he remembered correctly, someone or… something, awaited him on the other end of the structure, and it was suddenly vital that he reach them. Because even though he recognized this place, had seen it ancient carvings of it so many times it was probably impressed on his eyeballs, it still didn't answer the most burning question in his chest.

Had it worked?

_Zarathustra saw the deadly battle in the cosmos and in humankind's soul…_

Whoever or whatever was there, they surely couldn't begrudge him one last question. So his most immediate problem was getting there. At that, the barely suppressed shape of a physical grimace twisted his face as he looked down and noted his leg was still bad, and then seconds later lifted his eyes to the bridge itself, spanning the Gods knew how far, and standing only seven inches across.

"What is this?" he demanded. "A hand-eye coordination test for the undead?"

_Zarathustra saw that after life, every soul would alight on a bridge…_

As expected, nobody answered. Scowling, he began to limp his way towards the bridge. It would have been nothing to him two months ago. Heck, he could have probably handsprung over the entire thing. Of course, it wasn't as if he couldn't hold himself anymore.

He and Elika had dealt the killing blow together.

_The bridge spanned over Hell. The dead soul would walk it…_

He closed his eyes briefly in memory and then moved forwards. Dust tripped from underneath the tread of his boots, and he walked across it as confidently as any man could across a beam directly above the maw of Hell. Gradually, the mist parted and flowed around him, leaving tiny drops of perspiration dancing across his skin. It shrouded his view of the depths below, and for that he was grateful. _I mean, I'm good with heights. But really…_

Actually, that was a lie. The Prince chewed the inside of his cheek as he concentrated on moving one foot in front of the other without overbalancing and plunging to a premature damnation. He'd never really been afraid of heights. That would have been rather crippling in a man of his profession. But after he'd met Elika…

After he'd flown with an angel and fallen, knowing that she'd always catch him, he'd never _had_ to be afraid of heights.

Of course, she wasn't here with him now.

His jaw tightened and he limped faster. Across the horizon of his vision, he saw the slim reach of stone widen out once more, and his breath caught. Almost there. Almost there. And if the grave frescoes hadn't been wrong, then something else was almost about to happen…

_And at the end of that bridge would stand a woman._

She materialized in front of him, and for a moment he couldn't see her. The fog pulled in thick around the air, and for long seconds it shrouded her face and her hair as he limped closer. But then when he did, he froze.

_The soul destined for Heaven for their good deeds would see a beautiful girl. She would reach forwards and touch his forehead, then his heart, and he would be carried to heaven._

Same brown eyes. Same curved lips. Same gently rippling tresses, and he wanted to laugh through his tears, or cry through his vomit.

_The soul destined for Hell for their sins would see a witch. And she would reach forwards and cast them off the bridge. _

"Elika."

She didn't say anything, only raised her eyes to meet his. And that was when he realized that it was all wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. Because this girl, she looked exactly like the beautiful one he'd left behind, but it wasn't her. _It wasn't her, _not that same gentle, wild soul, and that made both fear and relief leap into his throat.

_And they would fall, fall, fall… until they reached the level of Hell that matched their level of wickedness in life. And there they would wait for the final reckoning…_

It wasn't her, but bluish black tendrils of magic snaked around her arms nevertheless. Suddenly, the heart throbbing in his chest began pumping harder. The grave frescoes he'd seen had always shown the beautiful woman. Obviously, they didn't want to allude that the inhabitant of the tomb had been anything but wonderful through their entire life. But that didn't mean that the witch was that much different.

She wasn't her, but she looked so much like her that he ached. "Elika?" he rasped again, and this time it was a question. "Before… before you do anything. Did it work?"

She looked at him blankly, a fallen angel who could not answer his prayers. He felt a cold prickle run down his skin. Okay, he hadn't anticipated this. Her eyes probed into his soul like it was written parchment, as if she could read ink and script where his skin was. The laughter in his throat that had died wanted to bubble up again.

"You know what's ironic, Princess?" he addressed the spectre, not caring that it wasn't actually her, just wanting something to hold onto. "It's fucking perfect, this."

She said nothing, continued to scrutinize him as if she could read his entire life story on his dead body. Which she probably could, in a strange way. Scars danced themselves across his skin, puckering their touch like kisses, and if he tried, he could remember the tales behind them. Just like the leg wanting to buckle beneath him told him the story of being crazy enough to throw himself in front of a blow coming for her.

He shook his head, marveling at the blessed irony. "You standing here, judging me. Deciding my fate," he cast her a decidedly lopsided grin. "And not answering straight a single question I have."

Yes, this definitely was not Elika. It wasn't even a shell. The real girl would have fired something wittily back, the blade of her retort singing a deadly caress against his cheek before driving home. But that in itself posed the question of why his final arbiter had taken this form.

He grimaced inwardly and gazed on her beloved, empty face. Probably because he was a master at the art of self-torture.

Suddenly she straightened, and his heart leapt in response. This was it. The joking and questions faded, replaced by only the slow clutching of fear.

_This isn't even exciting. I know exactly where I'm headed._

But that didn't mean he relished the thought of knowing. She reached forwards and he flinched away, instinctively. Her hand hovered in the air for a moment, and then lowered to clasp the other.

_But Zarathustra saw that some… some souls were sent to judgement in front of God._

"Pass."

Out of habit, he crooked a startled, incorporeal eyebrow, stepped back, and almost fell off the bridge. Barely catching himself, he swore under his breath. "Say what now?"

The bruised magic of the witch, the beauty of the girl began to fade to nothingness, leaving only her voice drifting in the wind. "Pass, and be judged."

He stared at the space she left behind. _Elika… _And then he shook himself out of it and remembered her words and dropped his jaw.

Why hadn't they just damned him from the beginning?

Then again, she'd said "Be judged." _That doesn't sound good. _He wet his lips and walked shakily forwards, trying to cast out the darkness with his roving eye.

"You know," he said aloud, "I'm flattered, really. Special case, huh?" There was no answer, no voice from the endless night around him. "Worthy enough to come in front of the Great One himself."

He knew implicitly that his cockiness sounded flat in the void, but hey, it sure as hell made _him_ feel better. The Prince settled a smirk on his face like an invulnerable shield, and even when the darkness was suddenly broken by an explosion of light, it held on as tight as ever. A throne appeared, kept aloft by a pair of unearthly wings and shining in a column of light. After a year in the near-darkness of a Corrupted world, it hurt his eyes so much he had to shield them. When he finally uncovered his vision, the face of God stared back, and it took every cell within him to keep the smirk plastered firmly on his face.

If he was going to be damned, he was going to show them what they were damning.

"Ormazd, I presume?" he asked lazily. "Or Ahura Mazda? I always did get you two mixed up."

Like the girl beforehand, the pitiful clone of the most beautiful, vibrant woman he had ever known, the God merely stared at him. The Prince felt the scintillating feeling of a million pricks of light sweeping through him, leaving every crevice of him opened, widened. The thought panicked him and stumbled his tongue.

"Anyway, it's great to finally meet you," he rubbed his hands together, palms ironic. "I mean, you've been _watching_ us for so long now. Always liked to return a favour."

He paused for effect, and then hardened his eyes. "Oh wait, there were none."

The God remained silent, searching. For a moment, the Prince wondered whether He'd even heard, and then remembered that Gods were supposed to be pretty bright. Hah.

Although that didn't explain the wait. Adrenaline and sweat trickled along his veins, and his nerves were still taut from the tension of having the fibres of their physical counterparts rent apart. That had to be the only excuse for why he said what he did next.

"Oh for your sake," he settled one hand on his hip, where his sword hilt would have been in life. "Get on with it and damn me already!" Fury stretched his voice thin. "I've been used up like a good little servant, fighting your damn fight. Bet I screwed you over good when I brought her back, huh? Well tough luck! At least I _did_ something afterwards!" That reminded him of his original question, and he scowled over the sudden quailing of his soul. "And wait, did it work?"

Still nothing. More staring, with unearthly eyes that peered into crevices that no mortal could or should ever see. He felt it, and snapped.

"Come on! You owe me this at least. We chased your stupid prophecy for months! The least you can do is give me a straight answer."

White, incorporeal knuckles. Harsh, unneeded breath. "Did it work? Did I make it right? Is she alive?"

Perhaps for his mortal mind's sake, the God had taken on a human form. And finally, _finally_, it moved into a frown. "I WAS NOT EXPECTING YOU."

Something oddly like relief and a new surge of disorientation hit him. The God's voice rang with a thousand bells, and the Prince cocked his head in an effort to stop the dizziness. "That's not an answer."

The God continued, as if he'd never spoken. "I HAD NOT THOUGHT… I HAD NOT THOUGHT ONE SUCH AS YOU WOULD MAKE _ANY_ SACRIFICE."

His dead heart skipped a beat. "You mean, it worked?"

The God finally seemed to register on him as a person, instead of just the weight of his soul. "AHRIMAN IS GONE, IF THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE ASKING."

Two months ago, he would have thrown dignity to the winds and done a dance, complete with shouting for joy. Now, he merely let a great, glorious grin spread over his face. "You serious? It _worked_?!"

If an omniscient God could look miffed… "YOU ARE NOT DOING YOUR CASE ANY GOOD, YOU KNOW."

It was the Prince's turn to utterly and thoroughly act as if the other hadn't spoken at all. "How about her?" he demanded, eyes shining. "Elika. Is she okay? Is she happy?"

The God tilted His head to the side. "YOU… ARE A STRANGE ONE."

The Prince felt like throwing his head back and crowing out his joy to the sky. "She's all right, isn't she? Otherwise I'd have been tossed into Hell the moment I showed my face here." The grin died down to a frown, followed quickly by a real, honest smile. "Can't think of any better reason to be instantaneously damned. But then, I wasn't. So she's all right!"

The God stared at him again, but this time it was different. "YOU… YOU HAVE NO UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW, DO YOU?"

The Prince jerked back to reality. Now that he was sure that he hadn't just stupidly ended his life for no reason and left Elika alone in a Godsforsaken, Corrupted world, the very real shadow of the future suddenly loomed over him. He tried to cover it with a laconic shrug. "Oh, I have a vague idea. You're here to decide whether I get sent down to where the naughty kids go or get to have cookies for playing nice, right?"

The God paused, and when He spoke His voice was begrudging. "YOU ARE _REALLY_ NOT PLEADING YOUR CASE VERY WELL."

The Prince's eyes narrowed. "Wait, I have to plead my case? I thought you were just supposed to look into my soul and weigh up the good against the bad. Isn't that what you've been doing for the last few minutes? What were you, spacing out on me?"

The God didn't deign that with an answer. "YOU BUT HAVE TO PLEAD YOUR CASE ON ONE IMPORTANT QUESTION. ONE THAT I CANNOT FATHOM, ALTHOUGH EVERYTHING ELSE IS CLEAR."

The Prince sucked in a breath. There was a perplexed look hovering on the God's face, an uncertainty mixed with frustration, and for the first time he suddenly realized that his damnation might not be predestined after all. And that thought was enough to steep him in caution.

"Ah, before I do that… could you tell me what's clear?" he gave a casual grin. "You know, just to know what kind of odds I've got."

The God pursed His mouth. "YOU HAVE ROBBED TOMBS FOR MOST OF YOUR LIFE," He began without preamble. "YOU HAVE STOLEN FROM INNOCENTS AND LEFT BROKEN HEARTS BEHIND."

The Prince's grin soured. "Yeah, well, I'll just have to remind you that every time I managed to amass a nice sum of gold, something happened and I lost it all again. I'm betting that there was some redistributive justice at the end… not sure if they were exactly what you'd call innocent, though," he shook his head regretfully. _Carpets 'this' thick! _ "Still doesn't that count for anything?"

The God pointedly ignored him. "AND OF COURSE… YOU RELEASE AHRIMAN. YOU SENTENCED TO DEATH HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE. YOU RIPPED APART FAMILIES, DESTROYED VILLAGES, AND BROUGHT GREAT CITIES TO THEIR KNEES BEFORE THE MIGHT OF THE CORRUPTED. YOU KILLED AND ENSLAVED MILLIONS THROUGH YOUR ACTIONS."

Something burned in his throat. "Yeah, and who left Ahriman down there in the first place?" There was a dark guilt, a shame, but he refused to acknowledge it because that just might drive him mad. "I just sacrificed myself to rid the world of him forever. I plead that that balances it out."

The God's eyes flashed. "HOW DO YOU PROPOSE THAT YOU CAN BALANCE OUT SO MUCH BLOOD?"

The Prince clenched his fists. "Because it would have happened anyway, and it would have been much worse," his voice was hard as iron, cold as his whispering blade. "There was what, a single piece of wood protecting the world from him? I'm frankly surprised it took people a couple of thousand years to bust him out."

The God moved as if to speak, but the Prince moved faster. "No. I want you to think about it. Because what would have happened if I hadn't let him out in the first place? He would have been let out by some other stupid schmuck. One that would have had no clue and now way as to how to stop him."

The God's frown deepened. "WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU WERE ANY DIFFERENT?"

_Possibility at salvation be damned_. The Prince glared at Ormazd, his voice tightening. "Oh don't play precious with me. _You_ sent me there. I know you did. Because no one else was fit for the job."

The God's silence was His answer. The Prince smirked vindictively.

"And most importantly of all, he wouldn't have had Elika. Because she would have been, oh wait, _dead_."

Ormazd narrowed His eyes. "SO YOU CONTEND THAT MORE WOULD HAVE DIED IF YOU HAD NOT RELEASED AHRIMAN WHEN YOU DID?" At the Prince's nod, His visage darkened. "AND YOU THINK THAT SOMEHOW BALANCES OUT EVERYTHING?!"

The Prince swallowed, but the anger and hidden shame in him overrode the fear. "If it doesn't, tell me what would. Because from where I'm standing, I just went through over a year of excruciating pain trying to figure out how to end it for good with Elika, and that's not even including the part at the end. You know, the part with the sacrifice." At Ormazd's start, he remembered something. "And hey, even _you_ didn't expect that. And you're the all-knowing God of Light, so it has to be something special."

Something that couldn't possibly be hope snatched at his heart as the contempt in Ormazd's eyes faded to contemplation. For a few short seconds, the God thought, and it seemed to span the course of hours. When He spoke again, it held all the gravity of a final question, and the Prince's heart beat faster.

"TELL ME. WHAT WAS THE SACRIFICE THAT YOU MADE?"

The instant reply that leapt to his lips was probably wholly inappropriate given that his fate lay in Ormazd's hands. _Uh, were you watching or not? I'm standing here dead, aren't I? All-knowing God of Light my cute ass…_

Then again, everything else he'd said had likely been wholly inappropriate, and that hadn't stopped him. Still, that didn't mean he couldn't turn over a new leaf right now, seconds before the ultimate verdict. Besides, as he felt the God's penetrating gaze on him, a sense of what He wanted came out, and the Prince exhaled, seriousness suddenly sweeping over him.

"Look," he stumbled. "I'm… I'm not so good with words." At the God's look, he rushed ahead. "But wait! If you could just, uh…"

He gestured vaguely to his forehead, and to his relief Ormazd nodded. _Thank you, _he thought without the barest twist of irony, and then he closed his eyes and opened up his mind.

_Elika. Elika in the sun. Elika in the light. Elika in the shadows. Elika stalking through darkness, lighting up the world around her with her purity. Elika in a Corrupted world that nonetheless looked determined. And most importantly of all, unbroken._

For a brief moment, the Prince opened his eyes again to check the God was getting all of this. At the impassive nod staring back at him, he quickly closed his eyes again and started hauling into the most painful recesses of his own soul.

The Prince took a breath. Funny. His soul had been searched so many times today. In death, by Elika's vacant clone, and then by Ormazd. In life, first by Elika, then by himself in his stolen moments of heaven as she willingly shared his embrace. His still clenched fists uncurled tenderly at the memory. It… it had burnt like fire and stung like ice, freezing and stoking him that this was what he had, what he could have had if they both hadn't been so blind, so fearful, so angry, so wary. Knowing that he could stay and live in a Corrupted world with a woman he'd damn everything for, and be as happy as anyone could get, but then knowing that she would always be sad. The image of her as he'd last seen her came to his mind, as solid and tremulous as a whisper, and he saw her determined lips, her gorgeous, steely eyes and her flying hair. Those would have been the delight he could have supped on for the rest of his life, but they would have always had had a bitter aftertaste. The image of her in the desert as he'd first seen her came to his mind. Backlit by the sun, gloriously golden. Gloriously alive.

A girl who was never, ever meant to live in darkness.

He could feel Ormazd's gaze still pricking at him, and suddenly felt inordinately empty. _Elika laughing. Elika smiling. Elika kissing me, breath on my cheek and lips against mine. Soft. Me holding her, bodies pressed together, fitting like some fairytale gone horribly wrong, and yet perfectly right. Fused. Holding each other against the cold. Finding a place safe enough to light a fire. Making love to her. Her making love to me. Making love together, creating a space of our own slipped and satined by ourselves and our bodies against the real world full of darkness. _

He could have gone on forever, but each image slapped him in the face with his own stupidity and crushed his soul under the weight of his guilt and defiance. The Prince opened his eyes with a choked breath, certain that the blurriness in his vision was due to him having squeezed his eyes so long.

Not for any other reason.

Not because of everything he'd lost.

His vision swam painstakingly slowly back into focus, not aided by his adamant refusal to wipe his eyes. When he could finally see, however, he was surprised to see Ormazd gazing at him, a completely unreadable expression on his eyes.

His heart near stopped when the God opened his mouth.

"DOES THAT COMPLETE YOUR CASE?" He asked, his resonant voice oddly gentle.

The Prince swallowed thickly. For a moment, it seemed as if he wouldn't be able to speak past the lump of tears. "Yeah," he said roughly. _This is it. It's over._ "That's all I got."

Ormazd nodded. "VERY WELL THEN."

And just because he could. Just because he wanted to. Just because he had to, the Prince closed his eyes once more time and summoned up just her. Just Elika, with no strings attached. No outward look of fire or righteousness or love, just the girl that he'd first met who saw only a stranger. The girl whose fire, righteousness and love moved inside her very blood, and who had been enough to completely change his world in the space of a few hours.

The Prince felt, rather than anything else, his tired mouth form into a smile. And with that, he opened his eyes, finally ready for the verdict.

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**A/N** - You guys are all amazing. Absolutely amazing, d'you hear? I was absolutely swept away by all of the wonderful reviews I received for the last chapter. I'm sorry I haven't replied to them yet, I've just been so boggled, awed and touched. Thanks for your support and words of appreciation. While I admit that after I finished the last one, I was toying with the idea of continuing the story, your reviews were what made me st up, take notice and get proper inspiration for this you again, from the bottom of my heart, for being such wonderful readers, taking the time to share my work with me, and letting me know what you think. :)

That said, please don't lynch me for another cliffhanger type! There will be one more piece to complete this arc, I promise. :) Also, just as a note, the view of the afterlife here is actually modelled upon real Zoroastrian/Persian beliefs, although I have taken some artistic licence. Just thought you might be interested. :P And because I keep forgetting to mention this to my lovely anonymous reviewers whom i can't reply to directly, I unfortunately am a PC gamer and so haven't been able to get a playable copy of the Epilogue, and thus cannot write about it. I hope that these current flights of fancy will be enough to until the sequel.

Again, thank you so much, my dear readers and reviewers. :) I hope you enjoyed this piece, because out of everything I've written, this one was most certainly for you.

Now wish me luck for my exams!:D

- Shadowhawke


	13. The Other Side

**The Other Side**

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**_The final sequel to 'The Fine Spinning Line' and 'The Verdic_t'

* * *

Elika lived.

She grew old, but never lost the radiant smile that lit up her face. She grew tired, but never lost that almost unearthly lightness to her step. She grew, but she never forgot the man she'd known for a year and a day - a man who had blitzed into her life like a Godsend on the worst day of her existence, and then stuck around for the clean up before sacrificing himself to end it.

She never, ever forgot.

So much so that her children and her children's children grew up knowing the tale. They would gather around this magical woman, falling miraculously silent as she cleared her voice to start her story. She would gaze back at them, these pictures of roguish innocence stilled to wonder, and the hole in her heart would fill up with a phantom for a while. Yes, these were her children and her grandchildren - even if she never gave herself to another man after him, she'd pretty much adopted this beach-side village as her own after she settled down there for good. She watched two generations around her grow old around her, and they in turn watched her in awe.

Her children, even though they weren't of her blood.

Her legacy, even though they weren't of her tribe.

They knew her tale inside out, almost as well as she did. Except for the more personal, more private things of course. And in regards to that, another type of interest in her never lacked either, even when her hair began to grey. But none of them, even the ones she cared for deeply, ever came close to the void that had lain open since his death. So when the time for her end finally arrived, she almost felt relief.

Because Elika had lived. Lived to the fullest with the gift he'd stolen for her not once, but twice. And now that she was dying once again, her only thought was that now, at last, she'd get to see _him_.

And so it was that Elika died, a smile on her wrinkled face, leaving an entire town to mourn the last princess of the Ahura.

* * *

She woke to consciousness in a familiar place.

For the third time, Elika faced the warm darkness, felt the cool breeze from nowhere and everywhere fan her cheek. The bridge spanned thick and wide in front of her, a beautifully paved path beckoning her over the abyss. She smiled carefully as she put one foot down, and then another and another. It was strange - she'd cheated death so many times she couldn't help but reflexively wonder whether the solid road underneath her would be snatched away at any moment. When nothing happened and she crossed without mishap, something began to prickle at her skin.

Where was the woman? The one meant to show her destined path? No sooner had she thought of the image, one appeared, and Elika had to stare.

"Mo... Mother?"

She rushed forwards but touched nothing, the spirit thin and ephemeral. She stepped back, startled at that, and the ghost, or rather the figure of a ghost, smiled.

"My Elika," she spoke, and her voice sounded like a chorus of bells - reverent and awe-filled. "You've come home at last."

"Mother..." she would have felt water brimming in her eyes, dripping down her cheeks wet with memories, except that she was dead.

The smile widened with an infinite tenderness. "Elika, I'll see you above. But first, our Lord wishes to speak with you."

She was gone as quickly as she came, a flash, but the memory of it was enough to leave it seared across her eyeballs. And then her last words hit her, and a strange and indescribable joy seized Elika's heart as she pressed forwards, her form in this place once more that of the young woman who had stepped out into a desert canyon, age stripped away to leave the princess in her prime. _Ormazd?_

And it was this princess who stepped before the shining being who appeared, who bowed low immediately and trembled with wonder. His presence was indescribable. From having soared to rival the mountains and fallen to rival the ravines, she had felt His light overwhelm her before. But this... this was something different.

She bowed, her knees trembled, and she fell. Something filled up, glowed gently in her soul, and without looking up she felt His smile imbue into her very being.

"RISE, MY DAUGHTER."

His voice was resonant with love, and she stumbled to her feet. As her gaze rose, a shining light too bright for human eyes suffused her and held her close. "ELIKA. FOR YEARS YOU HAVE BEEN MY MOST LOYAL SERVANT. BECAUSE OF YOUR CONSTANT SACRIFICE, THE WORLD'S GREATEST ENEMY WAS DESTROYED. I THANK YOU."

She dipped her head and smiled, a smile to rival Ormazd's light, even as the blood rushed to her cheeks. "I didn't do it alone, my Lord," she said quietly. "You honour me too much."

There was a pause, a flicker, and Ormazd shifted uncomfortably. "BE THAT AS IT MAY, YOU HAVE EASILY EARNED YOUR PLACE IN PARADISE." The sense of His joy lessened for a moment, and then dilated once more. "I UNDERSTAND YOUR MOTHER IS WAITING FOR YOU."

He extended a shining limb, and then a ray of golden light mixed in with the blue. Elika stepped towards it with wonder and certainty, the hole in her spirit quickening. For so long, she'd felt half empty, as if a part of her had been ripped away. Finally, finally...

Something pulled her back. It was just a tiny tug, like the breeze on the water, and if she hadn't been concentrating on the longing in her soul she never would have felt it. But still, it was enough to pull her short, and she stopped a hair's breadth away from Paradise and turned to her God.

Not knowing what it meant, she smiled again. "Thank you, Ormazd," she breathed. "For everything."

She sensed rather than saw the being incline His head, and with a returning bow, she readied herself to step into the stream of light again. But then the tug returned, more insistent this time, and she shifted as Ormazd's gaze fell on her.

"I..." she shook her head in puzzlement, and then laughed wryly. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I bet _he_ leapt into Heaven headfirst, didn't he?"

The God's light dimmed slightly, and at the silence her laugh petered away uncomfortably. This time when she turned, it was with a vague sense of uneasiness.

"... didn't he?"

Silence again. The uneasiness in the hole twisting within her began to slowly transmute into disbelief.

"Ormazd?"

The being averted His gaze, the silence thick as poison before He finally spoke.

"NOT... EXACTLY."

Elika stared uncomprehendingly, her thoughts blurring in her mind. It took a while for understanding to creep up on her, to dawn with the horror of unmitigated realisation. Her God's obliqueness, her own presumptions... she blinked, slowly.

_No..._

"No..." she whispered. Out loud, the denial echoed emptily in the wind. She raised impossible, helpless eyes to her God, not wanting to say the words. "He's..."

She couldn't say it. Saying it would make it real. She squeezed her eyes shut, clenched her fists, and tried to shake her head. But the need to know was too great, and unwillingly, despairingly, Elika felt the words bubble out form her throat.

"He's... he's in Hell?"

Ormazd turned away.

Suddenly Elika was dizzy with shock. She stumbled back from the portal to Heaven, gorge rising up through her throat at the thought. His easy smile, twisted in pain. His laughing face, thrown back in agony. His free spirit, caged in flame. There was something so indescribably wrong with the pictures, something visceral that ripped at her stomach and destroyed something inside. Angrily, she stared at the gateway in front of her, the one that promised bliss, and stepped away again before turning blurred eyes to her God.

"Take me to him," she demanded.

Whatever He had been expecting her reaction to be, that clearly wasn't it. Ormazd's jaw slacked in shock. "ELIKA?"

She clenched her fists. "Take me to him. Please."

Ormazd's jaw was still dropped, and He moved as if it as an effort to speak through the shock. "MY CHILD... DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING?"

Unlike the God's, her gaze was unwavering. "Yes," she said firmly, hands now by her hips. "I... take me to him, and I will stay in Hell until the Day of Judgement comes."

The God shook his head slowly in disbelief, as if he couldn't possibly comprehend what she was saying. "MY CHILD... ARE YOU... ARE YOU SURE?" He asked.

_His smirk, his smile, his laugh, his touch._ "As sure as I've ever been. Ormazd..." she wasn't sure whether it was a supplication, a curse, or a prayer. All she knew was that she had to make Him understand, had to make Him give the both of them a chance. "He... he gave me my life."

Through the shining light that was His aura, the God looked deeply troubled. He opened his mouth, closed it again in thought, and let darkness furrow His brow "YOU WOULD GIVE UP _HEAVEN_ FOR THIS MAN?"

The picture of her mother was running behind her eyes - her beckoning hand held outwards, her whispered promise echoing in her ears. She held the image close to her for a moment, feeling it meld painfully with her heart, and then cast it away. "Yes."

She had no clue how she looked at the moment, but the Prince would have said that she was beautiful. The soft, clean breeze of the afterlife whispered through her hair, framing her steely eyes and caressing her resolve. But the divine gaze that fell on her was filled not with appreciation, but with indecision.

"MY CHILD. HE... HE WAS A THIEF. A GRAVEROBBER. A MURDERER."

Elika let a small, wry smile chase itself across her face. "Believe me, my Lord. I know."

The look He gave her was incredulous, and suddenly she remembered that her fate, her choice, everything rested with His judgement. She held out her hand in supplication. "I know, my Lord," she repeated, her voice determined and strong. "I lived with him, fought with him, died with him. He..." she paused, trying to find the right words. "You're right. He's everything you say he is, but he's also mine."

Her tone gentled with awe. "He's my other half, a part of my soul." Her gaze turned up to her God again, and her voice turned pleading. "The... the other side of my heart."

His disbelief still throbbed through the room, and she felt everything she'd hoped and fought for slide away. "Please," she said quietly. "If I have ever served you for a moment in my life, please... let me choose this."

Something rippled in the God, something indescribable sparked in his eye. The light dimmed for a moment, as if in hesitation, and then it burst out again like the splendour of a thousand suns. Elika shielded her eyes at the change, as the being transformed into light, and Ormazd's voice, which had been stilled for human ears before, suddenly became hollow and resonant like the echo of a thousand spirits.

"NO."

Her mind blanked, and she did not hear her breath fall to the depths of her soul. Elika merely felt the gaping abyss of despair, of all her hope dashed by the promise of Heaven, and her world sank.

It couldn't be Heaven without him. Not for her. She'd fought so hard, waited so long. It was through a shadowed haze that she heard Him speak again, and this time the light took more than a moment to pierce through her hopelessness.

"NO. NO! THERE HAS BEEN ENOUGH SACRIFICE!" Ormazd's voice was strong, sure, for the first time since she'd learned her other half was in Hell. She blinked, got the feeling her God was on His feet with resolve in his stance, and felt hope sear through her so suddenly she felt like she'd been burned. "THERE WILL BE NO MORE! HE HAS PAID HIS DUE. AND YOU..." His voice softened, gentled. "YOU HAVE MOST CERTAINLY AND ALWAYS PAID YOURS."

She couldn't breathe. "Ormazd?"

This time it was definitely a prayer, and she felt the moment that her God answered. Ormazd stepped back, raised his hand, and then golden light blinded out her vision. She closed her eyes against its brightness, its life, and when she opened them again she was somewhere different.

* * *

Their story had started in the desert, but it ended here in a sweet, rolling valley that stretched out into the distance. Far away, the sun shone over the sparkling water, and she heard the rush of the ocean as she stood frozen to the ground.

Then she stumbled forwards and felt her heart break.

He was lying sprawled on the grass, Heaven's light flowing over every inch of him. His eyes were wide, unseeing, his skin still steaming from whatever level of Hell he'd just been pulled out of. She crawled to his side and cradled his head in her lap, tears blurring her eyes at how far he'd fallen. Around them, Paradise sang softly, soothingly, as if guilty that such pain could have ever been wrought.

It was a while before she could speak around the lump in her throat. "Are... are you all right?"

He started at the sound, eyes finally focusing on her, and her heart broke again at the wideness of his gaze.

"It's me," she said softly. "Elika."

His mouth worked. He swallowed.

"Elika," he rasped, his voice an uncertain prayer. And then something like a light flashed on behind his eyes, and he grasped onto her shirt. "Elika! Oh... oh hell... Elika..."

She could no longer hold herself back. She curled into him, into them, her lips pressing against the roughness of his hair, his forehead, his cheeks, sprinkling down her kisses like rain. "It's okay," she whispered, smiling through her tears now. "Not in hell anymore. Never again."

His eyes focused again, and she could almost sense it as the man she loved returned, as his consciousness swept back to the fore. "I... how?" he shook his head weakly against her embrace, pushing himself up with shaky arms to stare at her dazedly. "I was gone. Damned 'til Judgement Day like I deserved, I know it. How... how are we here? How are you here? I... I don't get it."

Elika reached forwards tenderly and stroked his jaw. It still felt exactly like she remembered, rough stubble against her skin, warm as she cupped her hand around him. "As if I could leave you in Hell, you idiot."

Comprehension dawned, slowly and amazedly at the back of his eyes. "What... what did you do?" he asked, and the dread mixed in with the awe pulled her back to reality, pulled her back into the memory of the harsh life they had shared, and her smile faded into a tiny lift at the corner of her mouth before blossoming back with a tenderness that stopped his heart.

She pulled him forwards. He didn't resist. She rested their foreheads gently against the other, feeling the voids within them fill up with something warmer than sunlight. "No more tricks," she whispered to him. "No more lies, no more deals, no more sacrifice." She hesitated, and then felt a wave of finality overcome her, Her heart throbbed hard, once, twice in painful recognition, and then fell away to wonder. "We did it."

She waited for him to realise the truth too, realise that this wasn't just another bargain with Ahriman, or another conditional judgement from Ormazd. She waited for him to realise that this was it, just the two of them after everything they'd fought for, everything they'd died for.

She waited for him to realise, and when he did, the suspicion in his eyes, the tenseness in his body finally evaporated away, and he collapsed into her.

"We did it," he echoed her, stunned. His voice caught against her skin, and she smiled at the rush of bittersweet memories.

"We did it," she confirmed again, and when he started laughing, when his soul finally shook off the last chains of Hell and joined her fully in Heaven, she laughed as well.

Time was different in Paradise. Elika couldn't say how long they stayed like that, clinging to each other, bodies shaking with pure wonder and exultation. But it didn't matter. It didn't matter, because they could have laughed for hours, or even days before they quieted, before they gazed at each other, before the light settled down to the glowing embers of fire and they moved towards each other and kissed. Because the hole that she'd carried in her heart ever since he'd jumped had filled, and the broken pieces of her heart had crawled back together and fused. Because he was there, with her, holding her hand and running kisses along it and looking up at her with the most beautiful, open smile.

Because they were together, all was as it should be, and the two warriors finally had forever.

* * *

-

-

-

* * *

And that ends the arc that started with 'The Fine Spinning Line'. I hope you all enjoyed something different - I certainly found these last few stories a wonderful challenge to write.

Thank you all for your support as well, especially to my wonderful guest reviewers who I can't reply to personally. I'm glad you're all enjoying this, and I want you to know that you all absolutely rock my world and brighten up my day. ^.^ My exams are now thankfully finished, but I will be away at a debating tournament from July 2nd-July 10th so unfortunately I won't be able to update until after that. Hope that's all right!

Thanks again to you all, my dear readers. If I have gotten better, it's because of you and this journey we're taking together. :D

- Shadowhawke


	14. The Last Resort

**The Last Resort**

* * *

**A/N** Firstly, I'm sorry for the long wait! Thanks for all of your amazing, inspiring reviews. They are a constant reminder of why I write, as well as the incredible people who are along on this journey with me. :D

Now, I believe I was asked for some fluff. :) I'm afraid that I've never really written fluff before, but I figured that, given the angst I've ladled on in the previous chapters, you guys definitely deserved some sweetness. So here goes my attempt! I hope you enjoy.

* * *

A clear, sweet wind brushed past Elika's cheek. Despite its insignificance, she couldn't help but smile broadly. It seemed like she could do nothing but smile recently. Smiling tiredly, smiling excitedly, smiling triumphantly. He teased her about it, sent sly jabs her way with a smirking twist to his own mouth. But she knew as well as he did that each and every smile was warranted.

They'd won.

They'd _won_.

And she wasn't dead. After so long in the darkness, Elika still had to marvel at that fact. And not only was she _not_ dead, she was finally seeing her childhood dreams come to life. _She sleeps with the day and wakes with the night! _The same wind that kissed her brow was skimming over the salty waves, rippling the mirror of the ocean into a mirage of colours. Elika breathed in the ocean air, wiggled her toes into the sand, and smiled again, a little more tentatively, at the memory of why she was here in the first place.

"_So... what now?"_

_She'd asked the question the day after they'd collapsed from exhaustion on the battlefield, the awe and ecstasy at their miraculous success still coursing through their veins. The blood of the Corrupted, the Corruption itself had vanished, and in its place had been left clear, soft-smelling dirt. It was the best sleep they'd had in months, and when they'd woken, reality had hit them over the head._

_He'd pursed his lips, his open face suddenly guarded. "What do you mean?"_

_She had shrugged. "It's just... it's over." Her face had broken out into one of those smiles. "No more of Ahriman's soldiers to fight. No more waking up in Hell. We don't have to save the world anymore, so what happens next?"_

_Something inscrutable had flickered over his face, so deep and so hidden that she'd barely caught it. And then he'd paused, as if making a decision._

"_What happens next?" his mouth had curled into a languid grin. "Time to fulfill a promise I made a long time ago."_

Elika's smile faded slightly. She still couldn't figure out why there'd been that moment of darkness, of grimness in him. For that split second, she'd sworn she'd seen the face of a condemned man on him, not the face of the warrior who'd fought by her side. The warrior with whom she'd bested Ahriman.

Elika sighed, and then shrugged. She wasn't going to let that ruin her day, not when Nature herself was trying so hard to cheer her up. She felt the warm golden ray of a sunbeam slip around her shoulders like an embrace, and she looked up into the sapphire blue of the sky. It was almost half past eleven, and the cold wind that often chilled her desert bones at sunrise had faded to the refreshing breeze that danced with the waves.

She leaned and shielded her eyes. High up in the cliffs ringing the beach rested a little house. _"A resort," he'd joked casually as they'd opened the door, "Or at least one compared to that we've been sleeping in the last year." _She still hadn't asked him how long he'd rented it for, but it was theirs for the moment and she wondered where he was. Half an hour ago, he'd left her, promising a surprise when he returned.

She sighed. _I have a glorious beach in front of me. I have the sea. It's a beautiful day. Why can't I stop thinking about him? _

The answer to that question stared her condescendingly in the face, but she pushed it away and stood up. Well, if he wasn't going to be back for a while, the least she could do was take a walk.

She was about to choose her route when the familiar, obnoxious sound of metal against stone brought her gaze sharply back to the cliffs. Above her, a small figure threw up sparks as he sailed all the way down, a pack slung across his shoulder. She rolled her eyes as he laughed with joy and then leapt off a few meters from the bottom, kicking up sand in his landing.

"You're going to erode the cliffside away!" she yelled across the distance between them. He glanced up, grinned, and strode towards her.

"Pin it all on me, will you Princess?" he smirked. "I'd say I'm just helping Nature do her job."

She snorted, and then noticed the pack. "Surprise?" she asked, her eyebrow arched.

He grinned. "Lunch," he replied, unslinging it from his shoulder. In a moment of serendipity, Elika felt her stomach rumble, and he laughed. "Come on, then, see what I slaved away to get for you."

She watched eagerly as he unrolled a blanket and began pulling things from the pack. Toasted cheese, soft white pita bread, lamb. It was a veritable feast, but what drew her eyes most were the mound of soft red spheres he pulled out last.

"What is that?" she asked, leaning in closer.

"Berries, and you have no idea how much I paid to get them." he grinned. "Come on. Dig in."

They ate on the warm golden sand, their conversation simple until she plucked up the courage to bite into one of the little red fruits. She didn't notice him watching with intense curiosity as she did so. Moments later, her eyes flew open as a flood of tart sweetness wet her mouth.

She chewed, and swallowed. "These are amazing!" she reached for another one.

"They're imported." he grinned, stealing one for himself. "A bit of a miracle I found them actually. They're rare where we are. The climate's not right for them."

He paused, casting her a sidelong glance that this time she noticed. "Maybe I'll take you to where they grow sometime."

Elika paused, her hand halfway to her mouth. It was a simple sentence, but both of them knew there was far more to it than either were willing to say out loud. It had been a week and a half since they'd defeated Ahriman once and for all, and the subject of their future was still hazy.

Especially on the issue of whether the future for was even going to contain a 'their'.

Elika bit her lip, and then replaced it with the berry. She said nothing as he watched her, only reached for another one. After two more, he sighed and began eating again. Between them in the silence, they consumed almost the entire precious mound until there was only one left. By then, the atmosphere had warmed again, and so when he reached for the fruit, she feeling up to their constant games again.

"Hey," she pouted playfully. "I wanted the last berry."

The Prince paused, the small red sphere balanced delicately in his fingers, and looked at her. "I know."

She opened her mouth to retort, and then all of a sudden he was leaning forwards, and the closeness of it was almost too much. Half an inch away from her nose, he stopped, his eyes stepping into hers. She gazed back, not wanting to wrench away, wondering what direction the spell around them was going to take. Elika could feel her heartbeat pounding at her chest, and she almost jumped when she felt something soft brush against her lips.

She looked down and realised he was rolling the last berry against her mouth, slowly, sensuously. Her jaw dropped a little in shock, and he took the opportunity to slip it in. Her instinctive reaction, to clamp down her lips again at the invasion, brought a sweet burst of taste against her tongue.

But he didn't stop there. The rough pad of his thumb gently brushed over the stain on her mouth where he'd placed the fruit. It was only the slightest touch, but she felt something hot spread from her skin like fire. She blinked again, and pulled back.

Her head spun with the movement, or something else. When her vision cleared, she saw his closed, shielded face, and realised that what she'd done might have been the wrong thing. She panicked. She had no idea what to say. "T-thank you."

He started and then looked at her inscrutably. She felt a strange surge of relief when he relaxed, the tiniest hint of his normal smirk edging one corner of his mouth upwards. "There's more where that came from."

_Okay, __**what**__?_

He'd been right. He'd promised surprises, and here he was pulling them out like cotton candy. For a moment, Elika froze. The weight of what hung unspoken in the air was almost stifling her. She swallowed, worked her throat. The silence muffled the sound of the gulls as they soared over the sea, the lick of the waves. When she finally spoke, it sounded strangled to her ears.

"What... what do you mean?"

His gaze was weighted. "What do you want it to mean, Elika?"

She could have screamed in frustration, but she didn't. Damn it, she'd wanted him to make the first move, if only to save her from making it herself. Because she didn't want to admit it, but she was scared. Reading something was one thing. Experiencing it was another. And with their past, their history...

She swallowed again. "I think... I think we need to talk."

It was the thickness in her voice, the uncertainty, the implied doom. She saw something flicker across his face, _almost like fear, almost like hopelessness, _and then the Prince's eyes darkened and he turned away. The movement made his scar stand out livid on his cheek. "Look, you don't need to do this," he said roughly. "I already know how this goes."

"Do you now?" she countered.

He said nothing. She shifted her position so she could look him in the eye.

"You're a backstabber," she stated, her voice neutral. For a moment, the hurt that flooded him before he hardened into anger was almost enough to make her falter. But she pressed on. He owed her, she owed herself one last game before she gave away all her cards. "A backstabber, a thief, a rogue."

He paused, and then chuckled harshly, and she could almost taste the dryness of it. "I believe you've made your point, _Princess_." He began to rise, brushing grains of sand off his clothes with an unwarranted viciousness, but then she lifted up a single palm.

That he froze instantly, eyed her warily, darkly, was as much a testimony to the hold she had over him as any words that had been left unspoken could be. _I love you. _It was Elika's turn to swallow thickly. How could she have ever doubted him? Even after he'd sent the world to hell for her?

"Wait," she said, her voice gentle now, warm.

His gaze pierced her, and then he slowly sat down again. The whisper of the sand at his movement reminded her of wind in the desert. She remembered home, gathered herself, and collected her thoughts. "You're a rogue," she said. "And you're not ashamed of what you do. I know that. You know that."

Beneath his skin, she could see him tense, stretch out, come dangerously close to snapping. "Is there a point to this?"

Elika looked into his eyes, his dark, wounded eyes, and took a breath.

"You're a rogue," she repeated, and this time her hand came up again, but it was not to stop him. Instead he sat frozen like a statue as her fingers reached forwards to gently touch him, to cup his cheek. Despite himself, he leaned into her palm, and she felt the roughness of him meld with her.

"But what you don't understand," she took another breath, "Is that you're _my_ rogue."

He jerked in surprise. His eyes snapped wide open, just in time to see her lean forwards and kiss him.

* * *

She tasted like berries, like warmth, like the power of the desert. He took three seconds to adjust to reality, to reassure himself that this wasn't a dream, before he leaned forwards and brought her to the sand, settling himself hungrily on her as they deepened the kiss. She shifted underneath him, bringing her hands up to tousle in his scarves, to stroke his hair. He kissed her again before pulling back to rest his forehead against hers.

"You... I..." he was smiling, he knew. A wide, idiotic, happy smile that felt so foreign and yet so right on him.

And she... she smirked up at him, gloriously. "You know, if I'd known that a simple kiss would render you monosyllabic, I would have tried this a long time ago."

He shook his head, marvelling at the wonder of it all. _Defeating Ahriman wasn't a miracle. This... this has to be. _"You little _minx_," he accused, but there was no fire in it, only the same dazed joy that was still making him smile like an idiot. "You've been playing me all this time, haven't you?"

He didn't wait for her reply. The suddenly shy, vulnerable look in her eyes could be dealt with later, when he was feeling a little less giddy, when she was feeling more like talking. Now... now was the time to revel in what they had, what they finally, finally had.

He picked her up, settling his arms comfortably under her shoulders and knees like he had a year ago. "You know what?" he grinned. "I think that deserves some payback."

Her eyes widened. "What do you mean?!" she demanded, clinging to him. And then he was running across the sand, laughing like a happy, happy maniac, before plunging both of them into the cold of the ocean.

Elika shrieked. He kept laughing as they both surfaced, less than a meter from each other. She spluttered as she rose, dragging a palm across her eyes to stare accusingly at him. "You... I...!"

He smirked. "You know, if I'd known a simple dunk in the ocean would render you monosyllabic, I would have..."

He didn't have time to finish the sentence before she laughed and splashed him. He blinked and shook his head, spraying water everywhere. It gave her just enough time to bound forwards and tackle him under again.

They stayed in the waves for almost two hours, the sea a sparkling, shining emerald around them as they dove and leapt, splashed and played. Then they dragged themselves up the beach and walked along the cliffsides, eyes stretched across the beauty of the pounding surf as they talked about everything and anything.

In the late afternoon, they went back down to their beach and did it all over again - the kissing, the immersion in the glassy sea. And at night, he insisted on carrying her up to their room, scrubbing her back in the bath until they were both warm again and could lie outside on the sand to count the stars and revel in their day.

_Their_ day. With many more to come.

* * *


	15. From the Maw of the Dark

**From the Maw of the Dark**

* * *

**Disclaimer: **Warning - a tad darker than most of my other fare.

* * *

_From the maw of the dark,_

_To the edge of all hope,_

_They travel in shadow,_

_In silence they cope._

.

_For to speak is to listen,_

_And to hear is to learn,_

_That there was a reason,_

_That hell came to burn._

* * *

They crawled across the sand, now that exhaustion had brought them low. And despite the exertion, the amount of energy it took to drag one limp appendage in front of the other, Elika felt cold. She hadn't quite connected her mind to her reality yet - the body she wore felt strange, odd, lifeless.

And yet her heart was beating, so she had to be alive. Her hands and knees were moving, so blood must still hiss through her veins. Her breath still whistled harshly in her throat, so she still had air to hurl a thousand curses at him.

But she didn't.

Elika dropped her face low and felt utter exhaustion tremble through every fibre of her being. He was there next to her, she could hear the grate of his travel-worn leather against the sand. He was there, ready to be damned, ready to be demanded, ready to be questioned.

_Why? WHY?!_

But she didn't.

Elika squeezed her eyes shut and kept crawling. Behind them, the Corruption crept too, its slimy slide forwards eating away their tracks.

* * *

_And the night still stands twisted,_

_The dark should be day,_

_But time is an infant,_

_When all's cast away._

.

_For the strongest of heart,_

_Can bear only so much,_

'_Til it shatters, or breaks,_

_At the tenderest touch._

* * *

She didn't know how many days had passed since they'd found the oasis. As one of the few precious water sources on the way to the ancient city, a single seal of Ormazd was affixed on the pillar before it, casting just enough dim light to keep the filthy encroachment of liquid evil away. She lay in the small space of sand untouched by the water, in the circle of Ormazd's blessing. She'd lain like that for what seemed like forever.

_Don't want to move._

She felt oddly empty, even though her gut was strained with the precious water she'd virtually inhaled to quench her thirst. The bloated physicality of her frame meant nothing, however, when her consciousness remained curled up somewhere behind her ribs, hoping to stay safe until it all ended.

_Don't want to live. _

She swallowed dryly. The anger that had coursed through her veins, diluted her blood with fire, had long died to smoulders. She was surprised it was still alive. The world of Ahriman pulsed around them, black with threat and thick with shadow, and its very presence seemed to press down in on her, stealing her air and smothering her flame.

She didn't mind. To feel anger was to feel again, and that was something she was okay being without for now. Not to mention that she knew exactly how to bring it all rushing back, set alight such a blazing inferno of rage into her heart that she half thought it might burst free from her body, scattering the shadow of Ahriman briefly before she burnt herself up.

Yes. All she had to do was...

The thought twitched her muscles almost involuntarily. Elika moved her eyes and flicked her gaze past empty shadow to his form. In the dim light, his musculature could have been a statue, if it hadn't been for the grim, impossibly human and living set of his jaw.

She traced every inch of him, and as expected, she felt her life return. Felt it come back, first in a trickle, then in a stream, and then in a roaring flood as all the bitterness, all the rage, and all the betrayal came thrashing back into her system like a wailing babe. Dizzy with the rush of it, Elika staggered to her feet, her palm half raised to strike.

Clinically, a part of her mind wondered how she must look. Clothes ripped and shredded from their past escapades and crawling through the sand, body shrunk to gauntness, cheekbones shadowed by Ahriman's night. And then the moment after, he lifted his eyes and she saw herself reflected back in them, in his irises, and in the clear shine off his black, black pupils.

It was the first time they'd met gazes since her death. Elika took in a deep, shuddering breath and felt it knife through her chest as the flood turned into a tsunami.

_How dare he? How DARE he?! _

The anger seized control of her muscles, lifted her palm up higher and brought blue flame to coalesce in its middle. She readied herself to channel it, to fling it into his rugged face. Prepared herself to see his last moments of fear before he was obliterated.

But instead, his hand darted out to block hers. It was a fighting move, and she should have ducked under it and brought forth her other hand to end him. But instead, Elika froze as his wrist slid next to hers and pushed it slightly to the side, just enough to angle the blow away from his head and for her to feel the tenderness in his skin. The move had been fast, would normally have been aggressive, but the way their forearms locked, side by side, was close and slow enough for her to feel their dual heartbeats thrumming against their walls.

For some reason, that made her stop. Made her pause. Made her hesitate, just long enough for him to graze her with his eyes again, and for her to see his Adam's Apple bob in a swallow.

"I couldn't lose you," he said.

It took her a second. And then she realised that he was answering the question she'd flung at him an eternity ago, and for some reason that made everything snap. The wall of fire, the inferno within her collapsed in a crackle of smoke, and with it went her muscles. Elika toppled forwards onto her knees, the impact of the sand jolting through her body. And it was that jolt, that shock, that brought the rest of the river, the flood up, in sweet, salty tears.

She cried until there was no more water left in her. Until her throat was as dry as the flickering embers in her chest, waiting patiently for her to gather her strength and rekindle her life again. And all the while, his arms were around her shoulders, his breath was on her cheek, and the murderer of the world helplessly crooned a forgotten lullaby into her ear.

* * *

_There's an abyss in solace,_

_A chasm in grief,_

_When your world has been saved,_

_Then destroyed by a thief._

.

_Who's a liar, a cheater,_

_A stain of a man,_

_And yet in his heart,_

_Lies the last grain of sand._

* * *

They were the last living things on earth.

Oh, she didn't know that. The lands they travelled were too vast, too broad to scour properly. And in her heart, she knew that it couldn't possibly be true. Ahriman's power was fed by terror, distortion, and slavery, and that meant that there had to still be people alive. And if people were alive, there still had to be plants and animals, food and drink. Their own continuing existence testified to that, after all. But sometimes as they entered a razed village, as they walked amongst the ash and stained their throats and lungs with bitter failure, it felt like it.

It felt like they were alone.

She felt like she was alone.

Alone. She watched as he frowned and his heavy boots scuffed the earth beneath them. Around them sighed a million lost memories, levelling the newcomers with a single, accusing glare. Elika felt disjointed, lost, out of place.

"Something's not right here," he muttered.

His voice sounded scratchy in the dry wind, and she couldn't help herself. "There's never anything right about the places we find," she snapped, levelling an accusing glare of her own. She felt an odd sense of disgust and grudging admiration as he shrugged it off like water, his gaze narrowing into the shadows.

"Keep your voice down," he near commanded, and then he strode off without glancing back.

Her breath sucked in at the audaciousness of it all, and her hands were fisted and aflame before she knew it. Oh, Ormazd she wanted to. She wanted to hurl it at his disappearing form, shape her magic into a knife and ram it in the center of his back. It would be poetic justice. After all, what had he done to her but betray her, and everything she'd fought for? Such sweet, poetic justice...

Elika took another deep breath, and then silently extinguished the flame and padded after him. And when they found the stench of decay in the sickening array of corpses, when they brutally slew the Corrupted who'd stayed there to feed on the death and misery and wretchedness, she channeled her life force into helping him. Into keeping him alive.

Because despite everything, she didn't want to be alone.

* * *

_In the darkness of midnight,_

_One torch cannot hold,_

_The grasp of the sun,_

'_Gainst the shadow soul sold._

.

_But two is a question,_

_That bids strength to flower,_

_To stand 'gainst Corruption,_

_For just one more hour._

* * *

She couldn't speak for the sound of her blood pounding through her throat. She couldn't cry for the glaze of disbelief shattering her eyelids. She couldn't scream for the wall of magma in her soul.

They were building. That she could see, from their vantage point on the cliff above. They looked like little connected specks now, but before her vision had blurred, she had seen the weary human limbs, the dragging metal chains. They were building, and the size of the thing, the magnitude of it, could only lead her to one horrible conclusion.

He hissed beside her. "A Temple to Ahriman."

She swallowed, pushing down the bile rising in her throat. But even then, she could only croak. "Oh Ormazd. Ormazd. Ormazd..."

She felt him turn to her sharply, but she couldn't care less. She swallowed again and swayed, sinking to the ground to clutch the earth for support. _Ormazd. _She'd hoped they'd be able to do something to prevent this, hoped they'd find Ormazd or destroy Ahriman in time. But now...

Now it had already begun. Elika felt a low, animal sob strangle her throat, the shock of the initial sight wearing away to let the floodgates through. There must have been thousands. Adult overseers with whips and manacles. Stalking Corrupted that oversaw the overseers. But Elika focused on the sight that had made her choke, that had made her fall. The tiny, scrawny little bodies lugging rock half their size. The ones in chains. The ones who were doomed.

Dimly, an old memory of a different time wormed its way up through the ether. But in sight of the view in front of her now, it sounded oddly distorted, twisted. _"Ahriman? The God of Darkness? Kills people, eats the naughty children?"_

"... Elika? Elika?! What's wrong, snap out of it!"

His present voice slammed harshly into the ghost of his old one. His laugh. He was kneeling next to her now, his hand firm on her arm, the grip of fear and worry tight around his eyes. Not that he'd ever admit to it, but she knew she could read him now, and that was the story she read.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. She felt warm tears leak out the side of her eyes. "Oh Ormazd. The children."

His fingers tensed. "Snap out of it," he repeated, and she felt the layer of steel underneath his concern. "You're not going to be able to help them if you're like this. What's wrong? This isn't like you."

She shook her head. He didn't understand. How could he understand? He'd never been brought up with stories of the horrors of Ahriman. And even if he had, he wouldn't know, he couldn't know the grimmer details behind it all, the ones only the last warrior tribe of the Ahura would have remembered...

She took another breath and tried to still her mind. She had to make him understand, had to make him see. There was a reason her soul was weeping now, was near breaking, was near despair, and it wasn't because she was weak. "They're building a Temple to Ahriman," she swallowed. "You don't know what that means, do you?"

His eyes narrowed. "Enlighten me."

"Ahriman will choose eight of his most trusted Corrupted to patrol the grounds every hour of the day and night. They will oversee the weaker souls who have turned to their God. And those will oversee the..." a dry, bitter laugh bubbled out of her, "The naughty children. The ones who have rebelled. They will be the ones to build Ahriman's Temple, brick by brick."

He looked at her askance. "That's not the worst we've seen, Elika," his voice was heavy with best-forgotten memories. "That's not the worst we've stopped, or avenged."

She shook her head again. He really didn't understand, and she hadn't finished. "There's more. Every hour, one of the children is chosen. To... to baptise the site."

His eyes were still narrowed, but there was a dark dimming shadow in them, one that was growing like the gap in her soul. "You can't possibly mean..."

"Oh yes." She felt something brittle in her. "They will bleed a child to death every hour it takes them to build this Temple. And once it's complete, they will ritually slaughter every worker - man, woman, child, to consecrate it."

She finally saw the glaze of understanding cross over his face. "But... but there are thousands..."

Something snapped. Elika leaned over and wept dry tears, wept dry blood at her failure. The magnitude of the Temple foundations sprawled before them, each foot already glistening blackly in the night. Somehow, out of everything they had seen - families forced to kill each other, darkly twisted perversions flaunted in the day, the callous slaughter of any opposition... this hit her the worst. Perhaps it was because they had never seen it on such a scale. But when screams wafted up from below, and she realised it was not one but hundreds of women wailing, something more broke within her. Something that tasted hot like despair, like hopelessness. Under the weight of the world and her duty, Elika felt herself crumbling, and clinically at the back of her mind, she marvelled that she'd even been able to hold it together until now.

But ashes to ashes, dust to dust. She stood, and felt the magic gathering in the palm of her hand. She could end this place. Rip it down block by block, destroy the foundations. She could throw herself forward, take down as many Corrupted as she could with her. She tested the reservoir of Light within her. Perhaps it would be enough to even break a few chains, let _some_ free...

"Elika!" in the haze of her despairing resolution, she felt tight arms grab her around the shoulders and drag her down again. "Elika, no!"

Something hot flared in her. "Why not?!" she snarled. "We can't do anything else now. We _can't_." She felt the tears bubble up in her again, and angrily pushed them away. "Once Ahriman finishes his Temple, his rule will be set. We won't be able to do anything!"

"And if you throw yourself at them now and die, they'll just rebuild," he hissed in her ear. She was aware of the grounding force of his arms, of the solidity of him as he held her, and she only wished they were strong enough to help her against the tide of hopelessness in her gut.

"What else can I do?!" It felt like her soul was walking on broken glass, like it was crawling through a dark corridor with no hope of light ever again. "We're done, can't you see? We're finished. They've won."

His voice was hard as iron. "How long do you think it will take them to finish building that Temple?"

The question hit her from the left, from off-centre. She blinked. "Sixty days," she said automatically. "His Temple is supposed to take sixty days." She looked down again, and a part of her died. "I think they've only got forty left."

He expelled a breath. "Forty, huh?"

It was the way he said it that gave her pause. In the initial darkness of her soul, Elika looked up.

"What... what are you thinking?"

The corner of the Prince's mouth turned up. It was hard, nasty, edged smirk, but for some reason the strength of it called to her again. It lifted up the tides of despair that had overtaken her, the crushing weight of her burden. "I'm thinking that Ahriman will never see us coming." His eyes lifted to meet hers, a silent oath, a determined promise. "Not in forty days."

Elika swallowed. And despite everything, despite it all...

She believed him.

* * *

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A/N: I hope no one minds my return to form. While I do enjoy venturing into the territory of 'lightness' since I'm beginning to worry that I'm starting to repeat myself, I think I'll always feel more comfortable with the dark. Thank you to everyone again for your constant support, your amazing reviews, and your invaluable feedback. You are helping to craft me into the writer I'm becoming, and for that I can't be grateful enough.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter. :)

-Shadowhawke


	16. Intelude: The Light

**Interlude - The Light**

* * *

_But then one day the darkness wept,_

_And in its gaze I saw the light,_

_The light that burnt until it kept,_

_The shadows back until the night,_

* * *

He was rummaging. She could hear him behind her, in the holes left by the sunlight. A beat fluttered in the hollow of her throat as she remembered the words they'd so recently exchanged.

"_You're a grave robber? A thief?"_

Elika shook her head angrily and stalked ahead. Why was she so angry? If everything went to plan... she refused to think of what might happen if it didn't - this place would be his anyway. Better his than anyone else's, she supposed doubtfully. At least he was a good fighter. At least he was earning it.

Something crashed to the side behind her, and she heard a muffled curse. The sound instantly gritted her teeth as all her justifications went out the darkened window. Unwilling ally or not, he could at least have had the grace to strip her home _after_ she was gone. Not that he knew about that, but really....

There was the sound of scuffling, his metal gauntlet against dry wood, and that and its implications were the straw that broke the camel's back. Elika sucked in a breath, whirled around, and clenched her fists.

"Ahriman may know where we're going, but we still don't have to advertise ourselves!" She'd turned so quickly she was momentarily dizzy, but that didn't stop her from trying to step forwards accusingly. "_What_ is your problem?! I-"

She stopped abruptly. Now that her vision was clearing, she saw that he was wearing an expression she could only describe as akin to that of a kicked puppy. He looked up at her, mournfully.

"You got _anything_ to eat around here?"

* * *

He was dead. She was sure he was dead. Panic had gripped her the instant the Alchemist had disappeared, because a second later, his legs had dropped out from beneath him and his eyes had rolled back in his head. At the sight, she'd plunged her will, her magic, into the Fertile Ground before she could even think.

And now...

Elika crawled over, barely breathing. The Corruption that had enveloped him, choked his throat and made wild his eyes was gone. For a moment, a surge of triumph filled her. She'd been right. It had worked.

But then... then he didn't open his eyes.

Elika knelt by his side for a few seconds before fully comprehending that something was wrong. And then the panic came back with a vengeance.

"No." It was a hoarse whisper. "_No_." And then she was on him, her hands were around his shoulders and she was shaking him so hard she thought her own arms might fly off. "No! Don't die, you idiot! You said you'd be okay! You said you were fine! You said..."

_You said you'd help!_

Elika's disbelief moved her into a frenzy. She didn't notice when he first stirred of his own accord. And then his hands were loose around her own and he sat up, almost toppling her over in his haste.

"Geez, woman!" he groused, holding his forehead. She blinked and backed away. To her uncomprehending eyes, it looked like he was trying to ease his head back onto his neck. "Are you trying to kill me?"

She blinked again. "I... you..." she swallowed. "I thought you were dead."

He looked at her oddly, and then a brilliant smirk crossed his face. "Aww... Princess, I'm touched."

At her look of venom, he laughed and got shakily to his feet. "Fine, fine. Glower all you want. But next time, don't take my head off before you're sure I'm dead, okay? It takes a lot more than this to bring me down."

Elika's breath froze in her mouth. _More than a dark God? _she wanted to ask. But she didn't. Instead, she fired something wittily back, and they kept on moving. And as they strode past the dead walls of her decayed city, she felt an odd lightness seize her chest. A lightness she hadn't felt since she'd discovered that the Fertile Grounds were failing.

It felt like so long ago.

* * *

He screamed.

It was raw, it was harsh. It spun out of his throat and filled the air, and in the darkness Elika moved instinctually. All thoughts of sneaking up on Ahriman's Corrupted vanished regretfully as she obliterated the shadow around her with her light...

To reveal the Prince of Persia half-cringing in front of a tiny scorpion.

Elika's jaw dropped. Her light fell from her hand in a flash, but the damage was done. Ahead of her, she heard the telltale sounds of startled metal, of slithering darkness gathering its wits. In the immediate silence around the two of them, she filled the air up with her seething.

"What in Ormazd's name is wrong with you?!" she hissed. "I thought something had actually happened!"

In the blackness of the caves, the blackness of Ahriman's release, she couldn't see the whites of his eyes. He was murmuring, quietly. She wasn't sure whether it was to her or to himself.

"Give me spiders," he muttered. "Give me snakes. Give me ants the size of houses and cockroaches as big as my roof. But not... please..."

She couldn't believe it, but then, she didn't have time to stand around and digest it either. Elika grabbed him by the wrist, not sure whether to pity him, laugh at him, or throttle him.

She settled for just hissing in his ear.

"Bringing me back to life? I'm getting over. Releasing Ahriman? It'll take some time. This? I swear, if Ahriman's soldiers don't kill you before this day is out,_ I _will."

* * *

They were in a dungeon somewhere.

Elika cradled her face in her hands. Dirt and filth scraped under her fingernails and smudged her cheeks, but she was beyond caring. It has been stupid. _So stupid. _They'd walked into enough cities after Ahriman's release to be wary of the shadows now - to be wary of smiling faces that said one thing and meant another, and to be especially wary of things that appeared to be normal.

Because nothing had been normal after Ahriman had risen again.

Still, caution hadn't been enough this time. This time, everything had seemed all right. Merchants had been trading, darkness didn't drape every corner, and although everyone they had met had a haunted look buried deep in their eyes, they had also been courteous.

And then they'd turned the corner. And in seconds, a cruelty had detached itself from the shadows and was whipping a mother in the street, her children sprawled out around her, crying.

Already taken by surprise, instinct had boiled over before she could control herself. It had only been little, a tiny flicker of blue light in the base of her palm before she'd caught herself and extinguished it. But it had apparently been enough for the hidden traitors who had been tracking them the last few days. The humans who were on Ahriman's waiting list to become his favoured.

So now... this. Rotting in a dungeon while they waited for the world to end or for their execution tomorrow. Whichever came first. Elika wanted to curl up in a ball and explode.

"You all right?"

His voice was oddly gentle from where he was sitting, three feet or so away on the other side of the cell. She couldn't see his face, but turned away anyway. Her voice was flat. "What do you think?"

There was a pause, and then the sound of rustling leather against stone. "I think you're beating yourself up over something that we can't control anymore."

It was the quiet way he said it, the lack of barbed sarcasm or steel in his voice. Elika balled her fists against her lap. "And what should I do?" she snapped. "Pretend everything's okay? Pretend nothing's happened?"

She flailed around at their surroundings. "We're in a _dungeon_. They're just waiting for tomorrow so that one of Ahriman's favoured can come to witness the _executions_!" Her fists faltered and fell. "I've sentenced us to death, you could at least be angry!"

There was a long silence. Far away, behind her, a trickling of water sounded - drop by drop. The space where it fell sounded oddly hollow. She supposed it mirrored the way her soul felt right now. She brought her knees up to her chest and linked her arms around them to feel some substance.

And then, he spoke. Elika jumped as his breath brushed gently against her cheek. He'd moved sometime in the intermittent pause, in the hush of her despondency. She felt her heart begin to race and told herself it was because of the shock.

"If my memory serves me correctly, _I _sentenced us to death first." He laughed dryly. "Don't take this all on yourself, Princess. That'd hardly be fair."

He was close. Too close. Elika took a gulping breath and tried to think. What was this going to be? The last time he'd brought this up, and the time before that, and the time before that, and the time before that, she'd returned each of his justifications with verbal bites of poison-slicked steel. It had only been a few months ago, but already she felt like she'd never known a world where she didn't hate him, where she didn't tremble from the burden of never wanting to ever forgive him for what he'd done and how he'd betrayed her.

But then... this wasn't that world. Elika closed her eyes as his hot breath brushed her cheek again. This was a world where they were definitively and irrevocably going to die tomorrow, and for that...

She hesitated, and plunged. A sense of unreality worked its way up her limbs as she gently reached forwards. His face was where she thought it was, right in front of hers, and she felt him start slightly before relaxing into her palm. She cupped his cheek and cursed herself for all the wasted days.

"I..." She smiled shakily, steeled herself. "I just want you to know before it all ends..."

He was a statue against her. She swallowed. The words were impossibly, unbelievably hard to say. "I've forgiven you, you know. I don't know when I did, but I..."

She faltered off at his lack of reaction. Time stilled. She felt him remote and isolated against her fingers, and in the darkness of her own mind, she thought that that might be the end. She'd overreached herself. It was too late. And even if it wasn't, they were going to die ignominiously tomorrow as failures, so what did it matter?

And then he moved forwards and he was kissing her.

Elika's eyes flew open. His mouth was shockingly warm against the chill of the dungeon, his purpose forceful as he cupped her cheek in return. It was her turn to freeze for a second, processing everything that was happening, everything that had happened, and concluding that she was an idiot of the highest order, before returning the kiss back with everything she had. When he finally pulled back, his voice was ragged.

"I..." the words seemed hard for him too. "I just wanted _you_ to know, before it all ends..."

He hesitated, and then leaned his forehead against hers. The pressure and her weariness made her ease back until they were resting against the wall. She closed her eyes and leaned against the stone for support, waiting for what he was going to say next.

"I..."

_Click._

They both froze. Elika was the first to turn, and then him, and when their eyes saw the chinks of light, they both realised that half the wall had swung away into a passage.

_Light! _A sudden, fierce flood of joy burst over her. Elika stood up so quickly she almost toppled him over. He caught her before either of them could stumble, and when she looked up at him, her smile faded as he saw the sudden uncertainty in his eyes.

Elika felt her heart rise into her mouth. And then, right before she took him by the hand and led him into the light, she wordlessly reached up and kissed him.

* * *

The battlefield was strewn with human corpses and fetid pools of Corruption. The deaths wove a strange silence around the place, as if the world itself held its breath at the fallen. Elika dragged herself up wearily and tried to believe it was all real.

Ahriman and his army had fallen. Ormazd's blessed army, the last scraps of free humanity, had prevailed. It was impossible. It was a dream. She couldn't believe it.

She took a faltering step forwards to the horizon and looked up at the sky. It was a milky black against her eyes, the colour of night, and that only intensified her doubts. This same night had blighted the world for all the months since Ahriman's rise. Surely this was a dream.

A sudden thought hit her, and she stilled. Dream or not, there was something vital missing. She'd lost sight of him after the final wave, and now her heart felt like it might slash her ribs. Elika turned, fueled only by adrenaline, and began to run across the battlefield. Everywhere she passed, brown bodies lay face down in the mud and grey survivors struggled to help each other. But there were only two colours she was looking for, two colours that might spell the end or the rest of her existence.

"Elika?"

She almost tripped over in relief as she turned. He was standing there, half his weight on his sword, the glorious colours of his scarves stained by blood and dirt. But he was there, and he was alive, and she was so happy she almost leapt into his arms.

"Ormazd," she inhaled him in, not caring about the sweat and worse that clung to him. "I was afraid you..."

"Me?" he buried his nose in her hair and held her close with his free arm. The claws of his gauntlet were shredded off. "Come off it, Elika. You know it takes a lot more than this to bring me down."

She wasn't sure whether it was a sob or a laugh that choked her throat. "You're an idiot."

He grinned. "_Your_ idiot, Princess."

And they leaned on each other until the sun rose.

* * *

Elika lay back, completely drained.

Pain still thudded through her head, inextricable and incessant. She felt more exhausted than she ever had in her life. That long ago day when she'd scaled her entire city twice in the space of only hours - that long ago time when every moment was the anticipation in the air before a battle surged... they paled with time and in comparison to the depths and the exultation of what she was feeling now. Memories of agony still sparked their way across her muscles, shivering her exposed flesh in the air. Somewhere not too far away, a plaintive wail sounded.

She closed her eyes. She smelt her own sweat, and then the scent of something darker as he returned to where he belonged. By her side.

The Prince dipped his head down and smiled against the shell of her ear. "It's a girl."

_Life, _thought Elika blankly, _I almost didn't think this could happen anymore, even after we defeated Ahriman. _

She felt his fingers tangle in her hair. She felt the weight of the baby as it was laid down into her waiting arms. And as she looked down at ridiculously soft skin, at the fuzz of hair, at the tiniest pinprick of light in the child's dark pupils, she smiled.

_This is what it means to come full circle. _

* * *

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A/N - May I just say... wow? I was overwhelmed by your responses for the last one-shot. I must admit my inspiration for this has been waning a little out of my worry that I've been repeating myself, but your responses to the darker turn has shored me up.

A big, warm thank you to everyone who read, and everyone who let me know how they felt. For those who asked about whether 'The Maw of the Dark' will be the beginning of another arc, it will be now because of your inspiration. :D Hopefully the continuation shall be up next time. I just thought I might split it up with a little light first. :D

Thank you again, my friends.

-Shadowhawke


	17. To the Edge of All Hope

**To the Edge of All Hope**

* * *

Sequel to 'From the Maw of the Dark'.

* * *

_To the edge of all hope,_

_In the silence of Man,_

_Such a perilous slope,_

_That falls to the damned_

_.  
_

_For Hell is a place,_

_That has come to Earth,_

_And triggered a race,_

_To disprove your worth_

* * *

Three days.

_Seventy-two children. _

He frowned, deepening the lines in his haggard face. He didn't want to think like that. _Couldn't _think like that. Thinking like that might dredge up something that resembled guilt, and guilt would stop his heart in his mouth if he thought about it for too long.

Not to mention it would make him useless, since right now what he needed was to _think_. He was sitting on a low-lying boulder, staring down at the dirt in front of him. In the absence of paper, he'd made do with a stick and the deadened earth. It had taken him at least five minutes to kick the ground into something that could be shaped and moulded. Each swing had felt as though he were kicking himself.

He had little to show for his trouble. There were three rough diagrams spread out in front of him, decipherable only by himself in their crude form. Three pictures, three places, three possibilities, because as he'd explained to Elika not twenty four hours (and twenty-four children) ago...

"_We have to find something."_

_She looked at him. "What?"_

_He curled his fingers in the dirt, in the bluff above Ahriman's Temple. "We can't take this down by ourselves, Elika. You're... you have powers that I'd only dreamed about, but there's only one of you against four of his highest Corrupted and the hells know how many of his Soldiers."_

_Her eyes were glittering, grudging. "You've either forgotten to count, or you've forgotten yourself. And given the size of your ego, I somehow doubt that it's the latter."_

_The smile that unfolded on his face was empty and worn. "Neither, Princess. When it comes to something this big, I'm afraid I'm just one grain of sand in the wind."_

She hadn't understood him. He hadn't expected her to. Hell, he didn't want her to.

He breathed. Elika was sleeping nearby, close enough that he could see her breath rising and lifting. _I'm just a man, _he thought to himself. A wry grin twisted his lips. _The most good looking man on the planet, sure, but that's worth jack all against someone as ugly as Ahriman. _

His eyes fell on her again, traced her form. _I'm only a man, _he thought to himself. _And I made you a promise I might not be able to keep. _

Anger suddenly rushed through him, a lava that burned his veins from inside out. He had never signed up for this. He had never wanted to fight another person's war. All he'd ever wanted...

His gaze found her form again, almost convulsively. She was still lying peacefully, her chest gently falling with each breath. She let loose a soft sigh and curled up closer to the blankets. On the ground, dirt and blood mixed through her hair, she hardly looked like a Princess. But to him, she was Elika.

And that was enough.

The Prince looked down at her, his gaze implacable. And then suddenly, he kicked the dirt viciously, obliterating his hours' of planning and work.

Above him, the sun shifted inexorably forwards. And somewhere not too far away, another child died.

* * *

_For questions are blades,_

_And your spirit has bled,_

_Look to what you've made,_

'_Fore caution lay dead._

* * *

Eight days.

_One hundred and ninety-two children._ They were travelling silently, too afraid of any noise reaching ahead or behind or around. They were surrounded by enemies after all; Ahriman's grip on this world was strong now, even without the Temple's completion. The Prince scowled.

"What's wrong?" she whispered, right beside him.

He jerked to attention. She was gazing at him intently, her pale face darkened against the shrouded sky. He summoned forth a lopsided grin. "Funny that you're asking _me_ that question, Princess. Want to hear your own answer back?"

Elika glared at him. A part of him revelled in the life of that look. "That's not what I meant. You haven't told me for eight days what you're thinking, what we're going to do. That means that there are either problems with your plan, or you don't have one at all."

Her voice lowered a few degrees, and even though he was used to Ahriman's cold world by now, he felt his skin prickle with the frost. "And because I know the latter option _can't _be true, because you promised, you'd better tell me what's wrong with your current one so I can help."

He stared at her. _Oh hells._

He hadn't expected this conversation to come so quickly. Or rather, he had, he'd just tried to ignore it. They'd been on the road for three days now, since the possibility of a possibility had reared its shameless head. The chances of its truth were so unlikely, though, that he wasn't quite sure why he was bothering.

He swallowed. Somehow, he didn't think that registered as an appropriate answer on the Elika meter. _Well, you see, I've heard this fairytale, which mentions this legend, which has this rumour of a crystal that can magnify light. But it'll only work in the darkest of times. Yep, you got me. A crystal. Darkest of times. Which, if the legend was right, will require something fairly nasty to happen, like a horrible, horrible death. Or at the very least, the end of the world._

He was so caught up in the self mockery that he almost missed the warning signs. When he noticed, however, he immediately snapped to attention. Eilka's hazel eyes had narrowed, and her voice was dangerous. "You _do_ have a plan, don't you?"

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Thought. Weighed up everything in his mind. Balanced his priorities. Assessed the risks.

_One hundred and ninety-two children. Elika._

And then he threw it all to the winds. The Prince felt a rush of insanity sweep through him, jerking his chin up and setting his shoulders. And then he looked her in the eye. "Of course I do."

_... you just probably won't like it._

* * *

_Slain by shadowed night,_

_And killed by the black,_

_When all's burnt to light,_

_Hope remains to crawl back_

* * *

Fifteen days.

_Three-hundred and sixty children_. The thought crept into her mind treacherously, threatened to undo her. Elika wiped her dry eyes angrily. _No, concentrate. _

She was balanced on a narrow ledge overlooking a precipice in some long forgotten cavern. There was no natural light down here, just the strength of her own magic. She was judicious with the energy, eking out just enough to light their immediate surroundings. After all, they'd been down here for at least a few hours, and she didn't want to lose their sole source of sight through pushing herself too far.

She inched forwards. He was a few feet ahead of her, balanced like a cat. "You all right, Elika?"

She clutched the stone beneath her. "I'll be better when you tell me everything."

She heard a faint snort up ahead. "Know this word, Princess? HYP-O-CRITE. That's right."

If they hadn't been searching for the one thing he thought might help them bring Ahriman's Temple down, she would have been tempted to shove him off the ledge and into the darkness. As it was, she'd be forced to dive after him a moment later, and so she didn't bother.

"Just tell me already, will you?"

His voice floated back to her. He'd moved farther. "We're looking for a crystal, Elika. I told you already."

Impatience hissed through her breath. "Real informative, there."

She could almost feel him roll his eyes. "Gods above, woman. I would have thought that you would know more about gems than a lowly grave robber like me. It's a crystal! A bright glowing rock thing, I don't know."

Elika was about to retort back when something hit her. Cold realisation beaded across her brow. "Wait, it's glowing?"

"It should be, if I recall correctly."

The bottom of her stomach dropped. "We're in pitch darkness," she said slowly. "And we're in the last room of this cavern. If this crystal thing were glowing, we would have seen it by now."

There was a pause ahead, a silence. And then no reply.

In the quiet, something very much like despair crashed through her. Elika dug her nails against the rock like a shorn-off lifeline. _Ormazd. _He'd dragged them out here for nothing. This entire thing was for nothing. There was no way that two of them could have ever hoped to bring a Dark God down, not once he had already been unleashed. Elika shrank into herself, torn between vicious anger and crushing sorrow. In the black of her hopelessness, she let her light wink out.

And then, not two feet in front of her, something in the rock began to glow.

* * *

_Back to a world,_

_That's damned to Hell's sway_

_For though faith's unfurled,_

_It can't turn away_

* * *

Twenty-three days.

_Five hundred and fifty-two children._

"I'm going to scout."

His words were clipped, strained. Elika looked up from her study of the crystal and wondered whether it was all getting too much for him. They were back in the sheltered bluff above the Temple's construction site now. Had been for a few days. A part of her had raged against the inaction, but there was little she could do about it. Practicality demanded that they ascertain exactly how to wield the weapon they'd found. And while she could definitely feel a ridiculous amount of pure energy when she concentrated on the crystal, she hadn't figured out how to unlock it. How to use it. How to focus it.

Then again, at least she'd had something to do. Some shadow had awoken in him ever since they had found the crystal, a dull agitation far worse than restlessness in his eyes. Any attempt she'd made to question him about it had been brushed aside, but now some instinct told her that she should try again. She set the crystal on her lap.

"You want to scout?" she asked. "Why?"

He didn't meet her gaze, and something in her gut twisted. "I just need to move. To think." His normally slightly furrowed brow was completely smooth, just like it was whenever he was trying to hide something from her. She narrowed her eyes.

"Well then, we can scout together," she said. "I need to stretch my legs out anyway."

A muscle in his jaw twitched. "I'd prefer to go alone."

The first thing she felt, inexplicably, was hurt. There was a reason for that, she knew, but she also refused to look at it too closely.

The second thing she felt was a growing, curling dread that snaked up her spine from her toes. "What's wrong?" she demanded. As soon as the words tumbled out, she cursed herself inwardly. She hated how often she'd been saying that lately, their positions reversed. After all, in the months following his betrayal, he'd asked her that question constantly, and her answer had always been the same.

_Everything. Especially you._

He opened his mouth and then shut it again, and she could almost see the cogs turning in his mind. His face was closed, a study in blankness, and a forgotten part of her ached for the time when his emotions had danced freely across his face. A time that had been too short... less than a day in her city, before everything had fallen down.

Still, he couldn't hide everything from her. Elika felt chilled, the remoteness in his eyes a warning that she couldn't comprehend. When he spoke, there was a finality to his voice that she didn't like.

"Just trust me," he said. He held up his hand, fingers rolled out. "Five days, all right? Just give me five days."

She looked at him incredulously. He winced. And then his gaze softened as he looked at her, looked _into_ her. "Please?"

Elika's breath caught. There was silence hanging in the air between them, filled with unspoken words and longings that she could not name; echoes of something that could have, should have, would have been. Against the weight of it all, she could barely speak. But she did.

"If you're not careful," she said slowly, enunciating each and every word, "I swear that I will hunt you down and kill you myself."

The words travelled across the space between them like a dry desert breeze. Then to her surprise, he laughed. Warmth sprang into the holes etched in his eyes, infusing them with so much feeling that she felt water rise in her throat. He grinned at her.

"Oh Elika," he said. The way it came out, it sounded like a prayer. "I'm counting on it."

And then he turned and was gone, walking off into the distance towards the Temple. With each step he took away from her, she felt her heart contract. She couldn't speak. She could only stare after him, her hand now clutching the crystal like a lifeline. Somehow, she had the horrible, horrible feeling that she would not see him again.

* * *

_From the path of the Fool,_

_He still treads on stone, _

_But wrongness has ruled,_

_So he walks alone_

* * *

_You've done it now. _

He pushed the thought away easily, but it came straight back at him. He groaned and batted it away again as he headed down towards the Temple grounds.

It came back once more. _Oh boy, you've __**really**__ done it now._

He gave up pushing it away and decided to just ignore it. After all, it wasn't as if the thought hadn't haunted him for every hour of his waking life for the last week and a day since they'd found the crystal. _In the darkest of times, huh? How do you even know that this will work? _

Well, he did have _some_ idea. He'd thought that death might be enough, but apparently the seventy-two children who had died since they'd come back hadn't made the cut. Still, that didn't mean what he was about to try would work any better. And besides, there were variables that he couldn't control. Variables like Elika.

_What exactly about this whole sorry situation makes you think that she'd even care? _

The Prince grimaced and strode ahead, trying to comfort himself. _Honestly. If this doesn't work, nothing else will, so I might as well give it a shot. _

At the pace he was going, he'd reach the outskirts of the Temple in less than ten minutes. He quickened his step. To tell the truth, the last few days had been nightmarish enough that he didn't even notice as the landscape around him changed from dead to defiled, to Corrupted.

_What __**are**__ you doing? _the insidious voice inside him asked. _Not three weeks ago, you were swearing you wouldn't keep fighting someone else's war. Now you're not only going to fight, you're going to sacrifice. _

The instant the words hit him, he grimaced again. Sacrifice. How he hated that word. _No, not a sacrifice, _he thought to himself grimly. _A gamble. It's a gamble. _

He kept telling himself that. All the way to the Temple. All the way to when Ahriman's servants noticed him. And then all the way to unconsciousness, when he brandished his sword, let loose a harsh, gleeful warcry, and slew at least eight Soldiers before he was taken down.

* * *

_And a gamble's a risk,_

_When the light is all gone,_

_Just hope you'll be missed,_

_When the day comes to dawn._

* * *

He woke with a pounding headache and aching, shredded skin. He hadn't quite known what to expect, but it looked like the party had gotten started without him. He was chained to a wall by his hands and feet, only a few links of slack allowing him a few puny inches of movement. Someone had already laid into him - blood soaked the left half of his face and ran in dried rivulets around his mouth. He grimaced as he breathed and tasted cracked skin and pain. He wasn't looking forwards to talking, that was for sure.

"Ah... up so soon? It's nice to see you still have your manners."

The voice was low, echoing, and vaguely familiar. The Prince struggled to focus as a man walked up to him. As the figure came closer, his eyes widened. Scratch that, it wasn't a man. At least, he'd never met an inhumanly, terribly, beautiful man with claws growing where his fingers should be.

He made a dry, rasping noise in his throat that sounded like a question. The thing grinned, showing sharpened teeth. Its voice deepened and blended, until it sounded like a nightmare, a shadow, a...

"You don't recognise me? I'm hurt. After all, we parted on such good terms."

... God.

For the first time in his entire life, the Prince was stunned into silence. Ahriman didn't seem to mind the lack of responsiveness. He just seemed intent on looking at him with eyes of liquid magma, studying him like a fine specimen of a butterfly pinned to a wall.

"Why are you here anyway?" He finally asked. The God sounded genuinely curious, almost childlike. His taloned finger absentmindedly stroked already cut skin. The Prince hissed in pain as the sharpened nails raked through his wounds. "I gave you my word - I didn't touch you or the Lady of the Ahura."

The Prince smiled. The blood that had dried to his skin tore, opening up his wounds anew and making the affair a horrible, gory flash of teeth. "Princess didn't like what you were doing to the kiddies." His eyes hardened. "Neither did I."

The figure that was Ahriman paused for a moment, and then threw back His head and laughed. "That? That's it? Some misguided sense of nobility, of heroism?" He laughed again. "Save the children," Ahriman mimicked, his voice sickeningly sweet. "Oh, I love it."

What little room the Prince's bonds allowed him snapped taut. "So glad we amuse you."

The Dark God's tone immediately honeyed. He bent down over his captive's ear, brushed rotting lips against its shell. "Oh, you _do_ amuse me," He murmured. His voice was like a caress, and the Prince had to restrain himself from shuddering. Instead, he glared up at the ceiling, his face like granite. Ahriman continued obliviously. "There's no room for nobility or heroes in _my_ world... there hasn't been since you released me a year ago. Seeing you like this, still so proud, still fighting against the monsters under the bed and the deaths of little children... you're so endearingly archaic."

The Prince snorted. "_You're_ calling _me_ archaic? Looks like someone hasn't seen himself in the mirror lately... _gaakkkk_!"

Ahriman hadn't moved, but there was suddenly a force around his throat, tightening. _Oh hells, look what happens when you badmouth the dark God._ He fought for breath desperately, flailing in his chains. But nothing could stop the blackness from encroaching, the single circle of light in his eyes winking out.

Just before he fell unconscious, the Prince heard Ahriman's voice in his ear once again.

"Oh little man," the God whispered. "I have so much to teach you. Like how there are things so much worse than death."

In the darkness of his mind, the Prince grinned, and an echo of an echo suffused his thoughts.

_I'm counting on it. _

_

* * *

-  
_

_-_

_-_

_-_

_-_

* * *

A/N: First off, I am so terribly, terribly sorry that this has taken so long. An important law essay hit me over the head, then other work crashed down on me, and then my muse was rather immature about doing this sequel.

I'd like to thank you all so much again, though, for your constant support and your wonderful feedback. I know it must be annoying that I've gone off on ever increasing flights of fancy as to the original PoP game, especially since I haven't managed to play the epilogue yet as a PC gamer with no access to an Xbox. But you have stayed and read and encouraged and inspired me. This sequel to 'From the Maw of the Dark' is for you, and so is the next part. :)

-Shadowhawke


	18. The Strongest of Heart

**The Strongest of Heart**

**

* * *

**

**Sequel to 'The Maw of the Dark' and 'To the Edge of All Hope'**

**

* * *

**_As the Strongest of Heart,_

_Can still be misruled,_

_When time spins apart,_

_He can still play the Fool._

_.  
_

_For though tendons can break,_

_And ligaments shred,_

_What pain can unmake,_

_A promise once said?_

* * *

He hadn't expected it to be so easy to fool a God.

Not that that made his experience any more comfortable, nor the pain any less agonising. His eyes were rolled back, and in the darkness, he thought he saw the insides of his skull. He wondered if it was still grinning, because he sure as hell didn't feel like it. Everything hurt, and hurt badly. Pain had been etched all over him, peeled open like a flower, each blood-red petal a testimony to the fragility of the human body and the tenderness of even his much-callused skin.

"How are you feeling, my hero?"

He made a conscious effort to close his lids, to slide them down dry, white eyes like a workman scraping paint off a wall. This was the worst part, he'd privately decided. Because while it seemed Ahriman wasn't omniscient, _such a pesky little thing, free will, _he could see enough into minds to know what was yearned for, what was wanted so much that one might damn the world for it. That was how the dark God plied his trade, after all. Souls for the deepest, darkest, dankest desires.

A sharp, shooting pain lanced through his stomach. He gasped, and forced the cry to stick in his throat. He didn't want to give him the satisfaction. And above all, he didn't want to open his eyes.

Something else touched him. Something soft, like smooth skin. "So brave, so… _handsome_."

He gritted his teeth, and threw his mind back to what seemed like years ago. _I have looks and brains then, do I? One you rely upon too much, the other you don't use at all. _He'd felt absurdly happy then. She'd admitted he was good looking within minutes of meeting him. _Gold glitters, it's what you buy with it that counts. _ Even if it was tied up in an insult, she'd admitted it. Her, the princess. He, the thief.

"Won't you look at me?" the voice was crooning.

He squeezed his eyes shut. What they had… what they'd _had_, was something that no God could ever touch. It wasn't. It _wasn't_.

The soft touch became a claw, razor sharp edges biting into his skull. He jerked, cried out in the sudden shock. Therein lay the problem of keeping your eyes closed – the torture of not knowing what was coming next. The grip slowly tightened, sending ebbs and waves of pressure to his brain until he thought his head might crack.

"Won't you look at me, my love? I want to see your beautiful eyes."

His head was exploding. He twisted, felt the chain snap and heckle at his wrists before he'd moved more than an inch. He wrested back the other way, trying to dislodge the grip. It felt like someone else was moving him, was tossing him around like a marionette as desperation shredded his bloodstream. _No. No. No! _

"Look at me."

This time, it was a command. He felt his consciousness come apart, shadows filling in the cracks. His eyes were fluttering open. It hurt too damned much.

But when his vision cleared, it hurt a thousand times worse. The Prince screamed. Screamed until his lungs gave out, until his breath died in his throat, and all the while, Ahriman laughed in a sickening counterpoint, wearing the face of Elika.

* * *

_After all there was trust,_

_Since the start of the end,_

_When each did what they must,_

_Though the sky looked to rend -  
_

_.  
_

_And then shatter apart,_

_The world that forgot,_

_So that every heart,_

_Would taste doubt turn to rot._

* * *

_Five days._

He'd said five days.

Elika lifted her face. There was a cold, insidious wind, one that passed through her like she was insubstantial. Her eyes hardened as she stared out into the distance. Shifting, grey sands floated, stirred an inch or so from the ground. It obscured her vision as she looked out farther, towards the growing spires of Ahriman's temple.

Five days. Had he known what he was asking? Had he comprehended the import of it? Five days was a hundred and twenty children. _A hundred and twenty. _Not to mention, it was her slowly languishing in doubt, slowly slipping into worry, slowly dropping into mind-gnawing fear.

It didn't take five days to scout. But then again, he wasn't scouting. She'd known that even as he'd said the words, and from the look in his eyes, he'd known that as well. Which meant he was figuring out something else, executing another plan or another stage of the plan. One that he hadn't told her about, and one that she couldn't help him with.

_That, or he could be running away. _

The thought floored her, brought back old hatred that rose up in her throat as thick as bile. She blinked as it coalesced and tightened her chest. He wouldn't. _He wouldn't. _

… he could. They were facing a God. The end of the world. What man wouldn't run away?

_The one who started it all. _

Elika bit her lip and forcefully shoved the thoughts away. They weren't doing her any good. All they were doing was chipping into her, carving her into a statue of doubts and despair. Besides, he'd never left. Even when he could have. He'd stayed to fight Ahriman the first time, and then for the year after; all those countless months, weeks, days. From the beginning, he'd proved himself to be a man who would follow a woman into a canyon, and then into a war.

She bit her lip. And that had been the problem.

'_Why are you doing this? It's not… you're not doing this for me, are you?'_

_He'd grinned. 'I only do stupid things for myself.' _

_I only do stupid things for myself._

Elika looked down at the crystal in her lap. It was still, inanimate, and small. It looked like nothing that could help defeat one of Ahriman's soldiers, let alone Ahriman himself.

Five days, he had said.

Elika curled her fingers around the crystal and waited out the twenty-fifth day, the cold of the wind and her doubts biting into her bones.

* * *

_And a world with no hope,_

_Can have heroes who lie,_

_Who murder to cope,_

_With a life running dry_

_._

_Because guilt is a beast,_

_That bows to no man,_

_And ignored, it will feast,_

_On the soul of the damned._

* * *

_Why are you doing this? _He asked himself, in the privacy of the dark.

Ahriman had left, but he knew that it wouldn't be for long. To be honest, he'd been unpleasantly surprised to find out how much free time the God appeared to have to spend on him. It seemed that, for Ahriman and the highest amongst his twisted coterie, the building of the Temple was nothing but a long waiting game. After all, they wouldn't deign to aid in the construction – that was the children's job, and the people who had once been human. And he supposed that striding amongst the workers, feeding on their despair and misery and stirring up more, might get old after a while.

Which left him with the ugly realisation that he'd come along just in time to relieve Ahriman's boredom. And the idea of being mere entertainment galled the hell out of him.

_So why are you doing this?_

He would have thinned his lips, but it hurt too much, and he'd never relished the taste of his own blood. At least he had the dubious pleasure of knowing that Ahriman had no clue. At least he was still defying the Gods.

Like the idiot he was.

Heh.

He opened his eyes willingly. The room was empty, and he allowed himself the ghost of a smirk. It hurt, but this time it was worth it. This had been the one gamble, after all. He'd been petrifi… no, he'd been worried that the God could just reach in, through. Read his subterfuge like ink etched on his brain.

But he hadn't. _That? That's it? Some misguided sense of nobility, of heroism? 'Save the children.' Oh, I love it._

The Prince smiled bleakly. It opened another cut, and he tasted his own blood. In all his life, he'd never been accused of either nobility of heroism. It was funny that the Dark God, the destroyer of cities and the end of the world would be fooled so easily. Especially when Ahriman had once peered into his soul and seen his deepest desire, and he in turn had accepted the bargain.

Perhaps evil was just too narrow-minded to recognise one who looked suspiciously like its own.

A footstep sounded. The Prince blinked, jerked from his reverie by the lingering remnants of what was once an instinct for self-preservation. This time, he watched as Ahriman entered the room, and although the waves of agony came soon after, he couldn't help but be glad that at least Elika wasn't being used to further his torment.

Still, it was only a matter of time before that or something even worse happened.

Something hot pressed against his chest, a brand, and he screamed hoarsely. Ahriman let it linger for a few moments, almost lovingly, before pulling it away. He shuddered and gasped as it left a horrific burn etched into his skin, pulling away the tears from his throat so he could speak.

It still came out like the wheeze of a dying man. "Why… are you even… keeping me alive?" _You perception-challenged shit of a deity. _

Luckily for him, Ahriman wasn't skimming his thoughts at the moment, and he had learned enough to keep his mouth closed. Sometimes. Instead of twisting the brand in again, the God blinked over lionlike eyes.

"And why would I do that?" The dual voices were amused, almost musical. "You freed me, little man." The God swept his arm around, indicating the rough stone room in the heart of the temple, where the Prince hung chained above an already bloodstained altar. "You gave me this." Something that might have once resembled a smile twisted across Ahriman's face. "You gave me the world on a platter, little man, and I think it's only fair that you live to see it become _completely_ mine."

The Prince turned away, sickened, but the God wasn't finished. "Besides," Ahriman shrugged. "I need something to amuse me before the Lady of the Ahura shows up."

Ice trickled through his gut. For a moment, his eyes snapped wide, wide enough to see triumph lurking wickedly in the depths of Ahriman's face. And then he was falling into pain, and despair was clawing at his sanity.

* * *

_While out of the desert,_

_Comes another who dreams,_

_And who's lived with the hurt,_

_Of a duty supreme_

_.  
_

_To her heart and desire,_

_To nights lined with despair,_

_So she'll walk through the fire,_

_And will face what is there._

* * *

Twenty-six and a half days.

_Six hundred and thirty-six children. _

Elika woke, a figure on the cliff sides, a solitary shape in the darkness. There was no fire or light besides the magic she held in her hands, but she held it close to her chest. The grey of the world pressed in against her, holding her in a smothering grip. She knew that wherever she looked, she would be presented with the same sight of those formless shifting sands.

She was alone.

She got slowly to her knees, and then to her feet. Silence crackled around her like a living thing. The crystal was still in her palm, fitting snugly in the lines carved there by the creases of her hands. Her mother had told her once that the lines represented life and fate, heart and head. Hers seemed to cross and sketch each other away before plummeting down to meet the curve of her wrist.

She was alone. She'd never been alone for this long before. Not as the Princess of the Ahura, in her first life, and then as Ormazd's crusader as she stalked the corrupted lands with a tainted knight at her side. She was alone, and she felt that fact bite into her.

Her magic was pulsing softly, but even then there was not enough light for her to see her own toes. Elika frowned as she stared into it. She knew what she could do. She could lock onto him in her thoughts, and then let her magic guide the way. Like she'd done with the Fertile Grounds, once, so long ago. It was a gamble, but then…

She shook her head. No. If he was in danger, a trail of light linking them would be the death of them both. Not to mention, it was too obvious. And in a world like this, she couldn't afford to make mistakes, even when time was running out.

_Only thirteen and a half days left._

Elika's eyes strayed towards the Temple. He could have abandoned her. He could have died. He could have gone off on some crazy, stupid plan that wouldn't work, because the idiot had forgotten that he needed _her_ to pull it off.

Her mouth tightened, and she began to walk.

* * *

-

-

-

-

* * *

A/N: Yes, there is one more sequel after this. :) I'm not that cruel. What I am, however, is very absent-minded and caught up in other projects at the moment, so I'm afraid that updates are taking longer than expected. But what I am most terribly sorry about is not responding to all your wonderful reviews. I will be making time over the next few days to get back to you; thanks so much for letting me know what you thought of the last chapter, and I'm really glad that this arc is still making an impression.

Thanks again for reading and taking this journey with me.

-Shadowhawke


	19. The Last Grain of Sand

**The Last Grain of Sand**

* * *

_And the last grain of sand,_

_Is yet to be caught,_

_By the winds of Fate's Hand,_

_To what he has wrought_

.

_For an ending is coming,_

_The darkness draws near,_

_And the basest of cunning,_

_May not save you here._

* * *

She walked for what seemed like forever. She walked like the possessed. Nothing could have stopped her; no Soldier, no demon, no Corrupted. It was the closest town, the one where they'd visited and he'd chased up his fairytale. She thought perhaps he'd come back to look for something else, some clue to unlock the inanimate crystal cradled in her hands. Had wanted to give her some space to work on the stone herself while he chased another lead.

It was a desperate thought, but it was all she had to cling to. So when she got to the town and found it razed to the ground, she had a moment of impossibility. Of fire. Of denial.

And then it was gone. Elika felt the bleakness of despair rise up in her, a sea of darkness pushing back against the light. He wasn't here. _No one_ was here.

Still, she hadn't come this far for nothing. Elika lifted her chin, the last, true, proud princess of the Ahura.

And she turned, and kept walking.

* * *

_At the end of the road,_

_At the crossway to Hell,_

_With the heaviest load,_

_Of an angel who fell_

_.  
_

_From the Heavens to save us,_

_From the Ahura to fight,_

_And yet in the process, _

_Has lost hope in the night._

* * *

The thought struck her a few days later, on the road. What if he _hadn_'t traced his steps back to investigate the tale? He'd gone towards the Temple, hadn't he? Her mind shuddered, stepped, and avoided that thought and went in a different direction. If her sense of direction was right, from their campsite the Temple had been in the direct path of another place. A place that, if she wasn't mistaken, might just have been the beginning of everything.

A sudden, fierce hope rose in her, and she walked again. He _had_ to be there...

He wasn't.

Elika stood, her eyes empty, surveying the lands that used to be, would have been hers. The lands she had fought for, risked everything to save. No sign of human habitation, of human existence was there now. The old City of the Ahura, the Library... all of it was covered in such a thick settling of Corruption that he couldn't possibly have entered, not even with his skill. She could barely see the buildings, the walls. The sight struck her like a slap.

It was so very, very hard to hope in Ahriman's world.

She almost heard the ghost of his voice whisper, the flare of her own old self. _It's not Ahriman's world yet. _But the Temple walls were rising even as she stood there. She could see them in the distance across the desert, a black speck on the sand. She could barely see the details, but she knew. The calendar count-down to hell was impossible to dislodge in her mind.

_It's been thirty-six days since we found it. Thirteen days since he left. Four days until it's finished, and it becomes Ahriman's world forever._

Her mind automatically began to translate the numbers to children. She reeled at the figures as they marched, cold and lifeless across her eyelids. Thirteen days. He'd asked her to give him five. He'd let her down.

Again.

Slowly, without even realising it, Elika fell to her knees in the dust by the road, the motes grey in the lightless world. The impact reverberated through her frame, kicked her in the gut until she doubled over. He'd promised her they'd stop Ahriman. She'd believed him. What if she had been wrong?

The sickness of despair welled up in her throat. If she had, then she'd wasted thirty six days. She'd let hundreds of innocents die. The numbers hit her again, a backhand that would have brought blood and sent her reeling if it had been physical. Her fingers dug into the dirt, the crystal cold between her palm and the ground.

She shook her head mutely, tasted hopelessness with every breath. What was she thinking? Even if he had failed her, she was insane to have hoped in the first place. Ahriman was building His Temple. In the stories that she'd known since childbirth, that formed a part of her blood as much as her heritage did, that only meant one thing. One thing that no one; not her, not him, not any human mortal, could stop.

A well of bitterness, of bile soared up in her throat. She almost retched it out right there, kneeling in the dust. But he had seemed so _sure_. So _certain. _So... grim. He'd looked like a man walking to greet a condemnation of his own making, and she couldn't understand why he would unless he _had_ had a plan.

But what?

The realisation took a while to hit her, probably because she had been actively avoiding it all of the last thirteen days. _I'm going to scout. _The burning behind Elika's eyes opened wide, vaporising the flood that had been building. _I'd prefer to go alone. _And she was suddenly left with the only possibility she could think of; one aching, impossible possibility that had crossed her mind the instant he'd turned away from her, and then had been dismissed with all the grace of the desperate.

_I'm counting on it._

_No, it can't be. _She thought. Her heart was in her mouth now, and every time she swallowed, it hurt like hell. _It can't be. He wouldn't do that. Not that. _

Not something so _**stupid**_.

Elika hovered, an agony of indecision twisting her arms. Time was running out. If she was wrong, it could all end it all. If she was right, it might still end it all anyway. She squeezed her eyes shut. Had she been wrong to trust in him? What if he had run away? What if he had failed? What if he were dead, and she alone?

So many questions, and she had no answers to any of them. Even worse, she knew she didn't need them. She had so little time left, she only had one more option, wherever he was.

_If you're not careful, I swear that I will hunt you down and kill you myself. _

The words floated back at her, so old, so aged. She would have laughed to herself at the memory, once. But now, she only felt a little of herself die inside.

And then the rest of her turned inexorably towards Ahriman's Temple.

* * *

_And what grows in the space,_

_Between hate and despair?_

_No room for the living,_

_No place to beware_

.

_Of those trifling moments,_

_That make up one life,_

_So when everything's lost,_

_You remember the knife._

* * *

It was the fortieth day.

_Nine hundred and sixty children. _She thought blankly. It was a fact that she couldn't grasp, a number she couldn't comprehend. The thought was a bleed in her mind, sapping her strength, her hope. _One thousand four hundred and forty since the beginning. _

It was a thought enough to swallow her soul. She looked down at the crystal. She had been carrying it now for what seemed like so long, it seemed natural to have it nestled in her hand. And yet it betrayed not a flicker, not even the tiniest hint of a glow. She almost crushed it right there with her fingers.

Instead, she forced herself to relax, forced her chin to move upwards to the sight that greeted her. The Temple stood below, wreathed black in shadow. The bank of clouds that had smothered the world with Ahriman's escape was gathered thickest over the pinnacle of the construction, the centre of the abomination. It darkened the site almost to a perpetual midnight, a black eclipse. And yet even in the darkness, she could see the massive heights the jagged stone blocks had reached, the towers that soared above the inner sanctum. Without needing to know the plans, Elika could tell it was almost finished.

As was she.

She slipped down the cliffside like a ghost, a shell. She dared to use her magic now that all was lost, gloving her hand in blue and ratcheting down the stone. It didn't seem to matter. Even though in the dark, she must have glowed like a star, she heard no shouts, no cries, no tramp of feet or even the slithering sound of a Soldier forming. It was eerily silent when she hit the ground, not even the slightest wind stirring in the dead air.

And it _was_ dead. It felt like nothing breathed as she walked amongst the blackened sand of the desert, blindly watching the colours turn from dead to defiled to Corrupted. The Temple rose up in front of her, stabbing harshly towards the sky. It felt like she was the last person on earth, walking alone towards her final stand.

The Temple arch had a great door, meant to be opened by two. She recognised the ring mechanism, and what was left of her defiance twisted up in angry rage. It was a mockery of Ormazd's sacred place, a perverted building for an Evil God.

And it was standing open, empty; a gaping maw into the heart of the Temple with none to stop her.

Elika halted. Behind her, the sand stayed still with the depressions of her footprints, not even the slightest breeze in the air to wash them away. This felt wrong. Not just the place itself, baptised in blood. But the emptiness. When she'd first laid eyes on Ahriman's unfinished Temple, chained prisoners, overseers and Soldiers had swarmed over it like ants, with proud Corrupted watching from the pinnacles. But so far, she had seen nothing stir over the ash-covered earth.

She eyed the gaping door with suspicion. In all her life, she had never seen anything that screamed _TRAP! _like this situation, but really, what choice did she have? Absentmindedly, she scuffed her feet on the ground, and then finally took note of its strange surface. Her lower legs were stained black already with the strangely greasy ash, her skin a grey, colourless circle against Ahriman's night. She looked down at the ground, up to the Temple, and then back down again.

And her heart stopped in her throat.

Ashes. _Ashes_.

A low wail worked its way through her chest, stopped seconds before her throat. She was standing on the remains of the thousands of souls bled and then burned to consecrate this Temple. She was standing on their graveyard.

Something coiled inside, wrenched in her, and in her hand between the cracks of her clenched fist, she didn't notice the crystal begin to glow, faintly. All Elika saw was the blurring of her eyes, the darkness of the world closing in on her. The thousands were dead, and soon she would be too. Because if the timing was right, there was only one last sacrifice to be made, to be scattered, and then...

A piercing cry splintered the dead air. Elika flinched as it hit her, as the shards drove into her ears and reminded her of her mission. Suddenly, she didn't care that the doors were open, that it was probably a trap. She no longer walked, she ran. Through the doors and into the darkness, sprinting headfirst towards her fate. She ran as if she thought she could do something to prevent this, to make it all better, to save the world. She knew that she couldn't, but she ran anyway.

She only barely acknowledged where she was going, so intent was she on getting to the source of that cry. Inside the gates was a maze; a labyrinthine warren of corridors and parapets twisting this way and that. But she had grown up amidst the halls that this Temple was the mirror of, and she wended her way through, deeper and deeper, heading towards the centre of the Temple where the main altar to Ahriman lay.

Once, though, just once, her concentration was broken. The cry came again, weaker, more anguished. And this time, closer, she heard every strain, every inch of agony in it.

She stopped, almost tripped, almost shattered her hand on the hard, unrelenting stone of Ahriman's Temple. _I know that voice._

After that, she ran faster, as if Hell itself was yawning open in front of her and she was dashing into the inferno.

* * *

_The blade of the hopeless,_

_The hilt of the weak,_

_The courage of a madman,_

_The light both will seek_

.

'_Til the ending of time,_

'_Til the darkest of days,_

_When life splinters and breaks,_

_And then bleeds away._

* * *

When she finally rounded the corner and saw him, her heart almost stopped.

He was hanging against the wall like a dead thing. His manacles were rusty with age and blood, and they held him up above Ahriman's altar like some final offering. As she stopped, stumbled, held her ground in disbelief, some unseen force breathed out and the chains opened. His body fell limply from its prison ten feet up, crashing into the ground with a few _cracks_ of weakened bone. It was only when the pained gasp pushed itself from his lips that her heart started again.

He wasn't dead yet.

Elika moved forwards before she knew she had, fell to her own knees in front of him. He was like a broken doll someone had forgotten to put back together; his eyes glued shut by bruises and dried blood, his face swollen beyond recognition. But she knew him, knew his voice, and felt salt rise in her eyes.

And then anger. "Oh, you _idiot_."

At the sound of her, he started back, recoiled. She reached forwards almost automatically to steady him, but somehow even in his blindness he sensed the movement.

"No!" his voice was a crack, a forgotten memory. She didn't understand, and then she saw the black veins running across his skin. Her eyes widened in realisation. He had been Corrupted.

He was dying.

"You _idiot_," she hissed this time with real anger, almost turned the hand outstretched towards him into a blow. "You sold your soul, didn't you?"

Everything crashed down on her at once. Why he'd wanted to go alone, the reason he'd left. He _had_ been running, just in a completely different direction to what she'd feared. The crystal had been nothing but a stupid diversionary tactic. Her conclusion blinded her for a moment, filled her eyes with nothing but the light of a betrayal gone too far.

In fact, she was so blind she almost missed it. He had been recoiling from her touch, backing away as if she were some instrument of torture. But at her words, at her hateful question, he suddenly stilled. Wetted the remnants of his lips and grimaced.

"El... Elika?"

There was something very much like hope in that voice. Something as disbelieving as her heart had turned. "Well?" she asked, suddenly less certain, but clinging to her assumption anyway because it made the most sense.

He wet his lips again with nonexistent saliva and started talking. She didn't know how he could, with that ruin of a mouth, of a face. But somehow he managed to. Even in her anger, a tiny part of her wrenched inside. _I never was able to get him to shut up._

"I'm... distraction. Have to... find Ahriman...." under his eyelids, she could see his eyes rolling up in the back of his head with the effort it took to even formulate the words. He was breathing harshly, his breath the whistle of a dying man. Even so, she saw the ghost of a smirk across his destroyed lips. "Hope... I bought you... some time... some darkness..."

He tried to raise himself up a little, fell back wincing with the effort. "The crystal..."

She stared at him, dumbly, trying to reconcile his murmured words with her previous assumption. And then the rage melted into horror. "You did this? You... sacrificed yourself?"

His laboured breathing was his answer, his strength too spent for now, but she could tell from the grimace across his face that he didn't like her wording. Her eyes narrowed. "You said you never wanted to fight in someone else's war."

Past all reason and physical pain, one eye, one single eye, lifted open. She looked in and saw him, both the man she remembered and a man she barely knew, looking steadily back.

"Made it... my own war... didn't I?"

The simplicity in his answer, in his gaze, almost killed her. She knew there were things left unanswered, gambles left uncovered, but suddenly the darkness in him that she had seen growing over the last year made sense. The change was staggering, unbelievable. From the man who had walked into a canyon without a care in the world to this... she had never believed it could happen. Not truly.

Unseen and unnoticed by both, the stirring in her chest stopped and the crystal in her hand went dark again.

Elika swallowed, looked back down at him. "You idiot," she said softly. "There had to have been another way. Look at you!" She gestured at him helplessly. "You're dying. You're Corrupted, and there's no Fertile Grounds around to save you! I can't... you're too far gone. I..."

His eye closed, and she was left with only echoes.

* * *

_For the maw of the dark,_

_Will devour the sand,_

_And the wind will stir hope,_

_Till it's stilled by the hand_

_.  
_

_That strengthens the spirit,_

_To walk through the night,_

_To hold through the black,_

_To the dawning of light._

* * *

Elika knelt over his body for what seemed like forever, but what was in truth only seconds. Her mind was blank, uncomprehending with the enormity of it. _The idiot. The __**idiot**__. _She wanted to scream. She wanted to mourn. But instead, his words echoed in her ears, and she staggered to her feet, turned blindly...

And almost ran straight into Ahriman.

He was in a humanoid form, but it stretched out, almost filling the Temple room. In one clawed hand He held a bloodless child, and in the other He held a flame so dark she could barely see it. She stumbled back, almost tripped over the Prince from that fetid sight.

But the distance did nothing to erase the hideousness of the grin that soon followed. Ahriman bared disgustingly handsome teeth in a smile, looking down at her from his height. "**IT IS OVER." **His voice filled the room with a black, evil glee, hiding the sounds of the Corrupted and the Soldiers moving into position around her. "**THE LIGHT IS FINISHED."**

Elika felt, rather than saw, the darkness around her. There had to be hundreds of them; the altar room of Ahriman's Temple was a large, circular manmade cavern not unlike that housing what was once the Tree of Life and its Corruption-dripping walls were now crammed full with the slithering forms of Soldiers and the slime of Corrupted souls. Ahriman Himself stood before her, ready to consecrate the Temple with the last child. She felt her soul sinking into depths she could not reach inside her, the spiral of surrender in her chest.

The Prince was dead.

She was alone.

The world was going to Hell forever.

And the crystal was glowing.

Elika blinked, looked again. This time, even the growing darkness across her eyes and the despair in her belly could not stop her eyes from focusing in the faint, pulsing light. She seized on it, felt the spiral in her chest tug in response. There was something there. A connection. She hadn't realised, she hadn't...

Slowly she turned her head. The sea of Soldiers and Corrupted stared back at her, their burning eyes slavering for her blood. She felt something stir inside her again, something more insistent, like a memory trying to be remembered, like a caged bird trying to fly. She turned back to the darkness of Ahriman, felt the agitation in her twist her insides, felt the hatred eat into her heart. And then she looked back down, to the man who had been at her side from the beginning. The man she could have loved.

And the despair, the hopelessness she had felt since over a year ago when she had first crawled across the sand trying to escape the maw of the dark broke. It built like a dam inside her, a swelling of energy, and the crystal glowed all the brighter. She felt it, seized it, and suddenly understood.

A blighted hope leapt into her chest, and she jerked her gaze up to Ahriman's. His abyssal maw still grinned at her, His eyes were alight with triumph, His moment come. "**YOU WILL WATCH THE ENDING OF THE LIGHT!"**

He moved to light the child, to turn it to ash. His Corrupted and Soldiers surged forwards as one to destroy her. But she was moving too. With one hand, she thrust the crystal aloft and then cried out, a single note of defiance.

"No!"

The cry broke the dam. The energy stirring inside her, her life made up of dreams and hope and despair, poured into the crystal. The gem glowed, flared, and then burst into light. It blinded her, but even through it she somehow saw the first row of Corrupted scream and disintegrate, and then the next row howl and vanish under her onslaught. Something hot and fierce in her sang at the sight, and like a living thing, the crystal shone brighter.

And then Ahriman was no longer grinning. He was screaming. She could hear His dual voices soar, a bellow of outrage and fear. The darkness pushing in around her, pulsating like a heartbeat, seemed to flicker, seemed to groan. The dead air had impossibly stirred into a wind, a wind that was whipping around the almost-finished Temple. She heard a series of thunderous_ cracks!_ as bloodstained stone was thrown into bloodstained stone. And throughout it all, Ahriman was screaming.

The wind tore at her face, driving stinging grains of sand into her skin. Elika felt the energy pour out of her into the crystal. The air was whipping into a circle, reaching up into a sky, a tornado centered on the black Temple and on the crystal. It grew and grew, spiralling faster and faster until it reached up into the maw of the dark clouds.

And then it split. Elika felt it in her bones first; a massive explosion that tore the life from her body and hurled it into the sky. She screamed too then, her voice joining in an unholy harmony with her deadliest foe. The energy ripped from her expanded, pushed, a supernova. She tasted tears as she screamed. _It hurts, sweet Ormazd, it hurts... _

And then the explosion became real. The tornado of blue light from the crystal burst through the clouds, exploded the darkness. Ahriman screamed again as the light rushed through, like a flood from a pent-up river. It spilled into the lands Ahriman had created, destroying the shadow and bathing everything in a brilliant blue light.

Elika felt her strength draining, almost gone. The last few drips poured into the crystal, spiralled upwards to join the growing bank of light. Ahriman was screaming, the wind was shrieking, but now a new voice had come into the piece, an almost liquid counterharmony that at once both inflamed and soothed the fire burning her life away. It was a voice that was both gentle and powerful, terrible and beautiful, and she knew it from her dreams.

"_**I AM THE LIGHT! I AM YOUR BEGINNING!"**_

Ahriman screamed again, this time in rage. She heard it even as her consciousness folded in on itself, even as she felt the last of her life draining away from her. It was a howl of pain, of wretched defeat, and she had never heard anything sweeter.

She felt the light stream down. It was almost to the ground now, illuminating the unfinished Temple with a glow so strong it obliterated the blood, the shadows, the Corruption. She was dying. The empty space left behind by her life was glowing too, gently. She felt like she could have been blown away by a breath. The wind was dying down too, the light expanding gently, and even as Ahriman's shrieks grew weaker, she heard what she'd been waiting to hear for what seemed like a lifetime.

"_**YOU WILL WATCH THE COMING OF THE DAWN."**_

Tears were streaming through her eyes, blinding her sight. "ORMAZD!" Elika cried; a clarion call, a dirge, a song. And then she toppled slowly to the ground beside her Prince, and the light claimed them both.

* * *

_-finis-_

_

* * *

_-

-

-

-

-

A/N - I'm really sorry for the long wait. Aside from my exams, my mother was diagnosed with locally advanced breast cancer recently. Things have turned out to be better than expected, but it still came as a shock. As a result, writing has kind of been the farthest thing from my mind.

I'm trying to pick everything back up again, though, so I do plan to continue writing these one-shots despite the title of this chapter. This arc has definitively ended, however. Thank you all for bearing with me, and I'd really appreciate it if you kept my family, and the families of everyone suffering from a disease or disability, in your thoughts.

-Shadowhawke


	20. A Picture, a Portrait

**A Picture, a Portrait**

She had a moment of panic when she saw his face.

It was twisted, a grimace, and her mind was suddenly not on the platform they were crouching on, ready to jump, but back to the battle not three minutes ago. Vivid colours splashed across her eyes; the icy blue fire that had boiled up between the Warrior's enormous hunched shoulders, the bottomless shine of his Corrupted eyes as he surged forth, again and again, massive fists of stone and slime pounding against much, much softer brown muscle and flesh. Her eyes widened, and she pounced.

"Are you all right?" she demanded. She winced the moment the words flew out; her voice had an edge of hysteria, like white foam on a crashing ocean wave bleeding out over the sand. But she couldn't hold it back. "You're not hurt?"

He lifted startled brown eyes to her, and then grinned. It looked oddly white in the dust and grime that covered his face, the ordinary filth that even a Healing could not wash away. "What's this, Princess? Concerned about my wellbeing?"

Elika could have growled. As it was, she merely straightened, uncoiling from her crouch on the Fertile Grounds to gracefully stalk towards him. She didn't have to go far. He had only been a few steps besides her, close enough to touch, but now she needed to look closer. Her eyes raked him over, clinical as a doctor's. And that was how she caught the grimace again when he straightened too, the spasm before his blinding smirk came back to play on his lips.

"Enjoying the view?" he drawled.

She rolled her eyes. "Something's wrong," she said, matter-of-fact. "I saw it when you stood. I..."

She stopped at the raised eyebrow. "I'm _fine_," he said. He drew it out, emphasised it to irritate her, she knew it. "But I'm touched by your concern."

He drew his gauntlet across his chest and gave her that mocking, heated look that she was beginning to despise even after only hours of being exposed to it. She looked away before she could stop herself, flushing lightly when his grin widened. _Idiot. _She turned back in challenge, saw his grin, and then shook her head in exasperation.

"Idiot," she said out loud. There was a strange satisfaction, almost a sweetness, at watching his face when she said it. "If you're hurt, then I have to know."

She took another step to emphasise her point, and then realised too late how close that put them. Barely an inch separated their skin, and less than nothing cut across their burning gazes. Locked in his eyes, her thoughts skittered in one direction, her mind skittered in another. It would be so good, so good to just fall into that heat and lose herself, to burn away the cold that lingered around her...

_No. I cannot afford this._

She jerked her head away to gesture almost violently at her city. Only about a quarter of its ancient beauty still throbbed under the weight of Corruption, but the sight of it was enough to break her heart and fill her mouth with acid. _I have to know._ "I... otherwise you'll let me down at the worst moment, and this will all have been for nothing!"

8 8 8

He had a moment of anger when he saw her face. Her face, and her wording.

She hadn't used 'die'. Or even 'fail'. No. It was 'let me down'. And even though a hard smirk and a warning was on his lips to remind her of what he had and hadn't said earlier, _I've let everyone else down, Princess. I'm going to let you down too, _he wanted to change that look on her face to something other than disgust. She hadn't looked at him like that yet, only Fate knew why.

He tried to figure out what exactly it was about seeing her narrowed eyes, her flared nostrils, her dark features that was getting him. He was used to such looks. He was who he was, after all. A grave robber. A thief. Neither were really professions that got much respect, and he supposed his slippery ways didn't really help the image either.

But still. His sense of fairness, or lack thereof, had chosen an odd moment to reassert itself. To have such an accusation hanging in the air already when he'd done nothing to warrant it, when he'd been helping her save her damned city when he could have just walked away, when he was beginning to frighten himself with how much he missed the moments where she smiled or the playful banter between them...

_What is happening to me?!_

He decided to screw with the mask, with the shield, and use his damn sword.

"Why don't you let me tell you what's wrong then, _Princess_?" he emphasised the title again, knowing it would goad her further. It did, and he felt a rather savage satisfaction when her eyes flashed. "I've been giving you everything I've got, and you're still being rather evasive about quite a few things." He gestured sharply at the expanse of the city below and around them, swallowing them up, a mirror of her own desperate feint earlier. He didn't even feel the pain as he did. "What did you mean this could be mine? Why won't you tell me what you think is at the end of all this?" He could feel the fire in the breath of space between them scorching his skin. "Why..."

_Why are you looking at me like I'm disgusting?_

He stopped short, as if he'd been suddenly and brutally punched in the gut. Her face had gone from dark to white. For a moment, she looked like a ghost, something dead in the hot desert light, and that was such a horrible image that he almost panicked. _No._ If there was one thing he knew about the girl in front of him, it was that she positively breathed with life. He pushed the image away as she finally moved, woodenly, like her mind was struggling to catch up.

When it did, he tried hard to ignore the implications behind his own sharp exhalation of relief.

Elika moved forwards again, and that step took her so close they brushed. "Your shoulder," she lifted one hand, laying it gently in the crook between his neck and his chest, seemingly oblivious to the pulse that was thrumming agitatedly beneath it.

8 8 8

He had a moment of solace when he saw her face. The anger banked and began to die, to transmute into something else - a flame not stirred by panic and doubt. The Prince took a breath and smelt her on the desert air, a faint mix of myrrh and frankincense and freshness. He didn't register the meaning of the combination, only that it smelt good. And it seemed to accompany the sudden, startling softness of her, actual concern where he had seen callousness.

He blinked, and the image did not change.

Elika raised her eyes from his shoulder to him. "How did you do this?"

It wasn't an accusation any longer, and so the question spilled from his still shocked lips. "Uh, I..."

She waited, one eyebrow arched, and that expression was so familiar to him that he grinned, felt the life rush back into his veins and his ephemeral mood change to match the newly cleansed Ground again. "We don't all have the powers of Ormazd, Princess," he said finally, his voice light enough to take away the burden it carried. "I don't think any man was built to go hauling himself up and down an ancient city all day without a break."

An idea suddenly occurred to him, and his grin became a smirk. "Say, I don't suppose you could rub them for me, could you? That would make it all better."

It was Elika's turn to blink, and suddenly the world became even brighter. Then she smirked, and the part of him he was resolutely ignoring again glowed. "Nice try," she said, raising her hand again. This time, the blue light flew nowhere - it settled into his muscles instead, easing each strained cord. He gasped as he felt the pain melt, at the suddenness of it all, and with the re-realisation that the woman in front of him held both life and death in her hands. And when he finally looked back at her, his eyes had softened.

8 8 8

She had a moment of clarity when she saw his face.

It would be all too easy to say something to him when he was like this, his boundaries half-dropped, his features open and alive with a startled warmth. But Elika was long practiced at spinning her dreams intensely and then letting them go.

So instead, she asked him if he were ready to go on. And when he nodded, she turned away so he couldn't see the look on her face, and walked on.

On, until she fell. And then, she would never know what she had looked like after that. Or what, exactly, he could have possibly seen in her face to damn the world.

A/N: Oh wow. I can't believe it's been so long. I'm truly sorry, and even more sorry to those reading my Avatar fanfic as well.

Things at home are still strained, and work is getting more hectic, but I will try not to leave a four month gap again. Thank you to everyone for being so patient, and I hope that I haven't gotten so rusty that I can't bring a smile or a tear to your face again. :)


	21. Her Infinite Variety

**WARNING: Adult, sexual content ahead. This little piece should probably be rated M.**

**

* * *

****Her Infinite Variety**

* * *

_Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale_

_Her infinite variety ~ Antony and Cleopatra, Act II Scene II._

* * *

_Elika._

Elika refused to open her eyes. There was no one in the room. _No one_. She knew it, just as she knew that she was alive again, that she was alone. Alone in the decrepit old inn room three coppers could buy, alone in the strange city full of such unfriendly faces, alone in the world...

No. The last one wasn't quite true. Elika fisted her hand in the sheets. She _knew_ it wasn't true. It couldn't be. She would find her people, and then they would defeat Ahriman together and...

_Elika._

It was torture, but she did not open her eyes. The echo was a figment of her imagination, she was sure of it. As it was, she'd almost bolted out of the rough bed the first three times she'd heard it. Not just because it was her name, but because it was _him_. She knew it. No one else pronounced her name that way, rolled it in their mouth like a godsend, a saviour, a life. She knew the echo was of him, and it galled her that she knew it. Galled her that it was following her around _after she'd left him behind, damn it. _

She hadn't thought his voice would follow her around in her thoughts.

His voice, whispering her name.

_Elika._

It wasn't always a whisper. Sometimes it was a shout, full of fear and anger. He'd done that a few times in their two days together. Two days. Huh. She had heard her name for her entire lifetime of over two decades, and two days was all it took for her name to be imbued with something different, something richer, something that _she didn't want. _

Sometimes it was a cry, a plea for help, a prayer. _Elika! _When he was falling, and she was his only hope, his only light.

Elika rolled over, but kept her eyes shut. Two days it had taken to impress the memory of her name on his lips on her mind forever. Two days since she'd left him clutching at air. She was lingering in this city now, she knew. She should have moved on. But when she'd realised she had no food or water, and that people weren't going to give her anything for free, what else could she have done but stayed?

And she wasn't him, she wasn't a thief, so she did the only thing she could think of. Elika had pride, but she also had principles, and she convinced herself that if she was on the street, begging, she might find someone who knew where she could go next. Who knew how to find her people.

As it was, she'd found a lot of strangers were quite happy to walk past beggars, and a lot more who spat insults or leered. It was only after a group of them had stepped close and suggested things that made her ears burn, promising they'd pay her good money, that she'd snapped and blown them away.

That had earned her three coppers from a quivering bully. One in a thousand of them. Three coppers she'd immediately blown on lodgings from the approaching cold desert night.

"_Elika_."

This time, despite her stubbornness, Elika's eyes shot open and found the wall. The wall, and the shadow on it, outlined perfectly by the ghostly moonlight pouring through the curtains.

The curtains she was _certain_ she'd closed.

_No, it can't be. _

A step. Not a phantom one - they'd been haunting her as well. It seemed she was so used to hearing the sound of his shoes, him running, him walking, him fighting that in the oddest moments she'd hear them again in the heartbeat of the crowd or through the boisterous din of the least hideous little place she'd checked into that would accept three coppers for a _single_ room.

Another step.

"No." She said out loud, as if to deny the possibility. And, because Ahriman hated her, he spoke right back.

"Elika," he said softly, and that was all it took. Cold shot through her gut, clenched her throat closed and ripped her stomach open. She had never heard her name on his lips like that. The syllables seemed wrenched from a throat of sand, pouring as precious as water in the dry desert. It was more than a prayer, it was a quiet demand, and as the cold seized her she couldn't stay still any more. Fighting against the icy terror underneath the blazing anger, Elika turned and stood and _glared_.

It was a look that could have broke a lesser man to pieces, could have sent him running, could have made him cower, could have made him flinch. She wasn't aware of when she'd summoned her magic, but it glowed around her like a divine aura, highlighting the shadows in her face and the declivity in her mouth and making her an avenging angel of Heaven.

And of course, he just looked straight back at her, his heart on his face, and said "Elika."

It was like a breath of air on a glowing flame. She became a firestorm. Incandescent. "Ormazd take you! Why are you here?! I told you I was doing this alone!"

She did not question a small part of her that unfurled at his presence, a part that had expected this all along. A part that... no, she would not admit that. It wasn't possible. She covered up her confusion with more anger, until she thought she would swell with it and it would spill over into tears of blue fire.

"You ignorant bastard," she hissed. "You _idiot_. Why did you come after me?"

It looked like he might speak, interrupt at that, but she sure as Hell wasn't going to let him. He didn't deserve that. Didn't deserve a breath. The fact that she was sure she would break if he said her name again like he had was not one that she was even going to acknowledge. "To screw it up again! To fail!"

She ruthlessly pushed past the hurt look on his face, the one that she would never have expected in a million years. What right did _he_ have to look hurt? "Or were you coming to gloat? Did you think I couldn't do it by myself? Well guess what! I can!"

The expression on his face was indescribable now. She didn't want to put words to it, afraid of what they might mean. And so instead of trying, she shored up her last weapon, sharpening the blade until it gleamed, and then brought it down with all her strength.

"_I. DON'T. NEED. YOU!_"

The words tore from her like a tsunami, took a life of their own. She half expected them to form a whirlwind that would rock him off his feet, send him crashing to the ground. But instead, to her shock, the wind seemed to part around him, and when the gale had blown itself out, he still stood there.

Calm.

Unmoving.

And ready to speak.

Elika blinked. She did not get angry often, but when she had, the pitiful remnants of her people in the City had learnt to avoid her for hours. No one, not even her father had been able to take such a sustained onslaught for so long. Let alone look so _unaffected_. If Elika hadn't been so angry, she might have been insulted. As it was, she couldn't think past the red haze swarming her eyes, so she didn't even realise the sheer power of whatever was driving him to stand there so calmly.

It was almost as if he had been waiting for her to be struck by surprise. The Prince arched his eyebrow, and she blinked again. She'd thought bitterly in the hours that had passed that if forty-eight hours had been enough for her to learn every way he breathed her name, it had surely been enough for her to never forget the way he raised his eyebrow. Only it obviously hadn't been, because the expression he wore now was like nothing she'd ever seen before. Hard. Unyielding. Sharp. And when he opened his mouth to speak, the shapes he formed weren't her name.

"How did you pay for this room?"

She blinked again. It seemed like she'd been doing that an awful lot in the past minute, since she'd screamed at him at the top of his lungs. She still couldn't process why he was still there, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyebrow arched, and not running for the hills or getting angry back.

"Well, Princess?" his smirk was more of a sneer now, an almost ugly thing, and she blinked again in surprise. Ugly was not a word that she had ever associated with him. There had been other words, words she'd found in forbidden scrolls that...

_Not thinking about that right now. _

Her head lifted defiantly. "I didn't steal it, like you would have," she said proudly. Her eyes dared him to argue he wouldn't have. He didn't. He just snorted.

"Let me see. You've probably been in this dump of a city for less than three hours. Not enough time to get a job." His eyes flashed suddenly. "Or at least, not the type of job that a girl like you would take."

The way he drawled it made her suddenly want to slap him. But before she could, his eyes narrowed and she stopped.

_Well damn. _

He said the words like he was biting them off, arriving at a conclusion that he would prefer to spit out than to contemplate. "Which means, knowing the sorry states of these streets and the lack of charity in the world you wanted to die to save... that you _begged_."

The last word came out like a vile curse word, and she blinked. Again. Before hardening her own features and crossing her own arms across her chest. She didn't notice his glance flicker down briefly before jumping back to her face again, nor the sudden heat in the room. "I don't need you," she repeated again, her words as icy as the sea. But this time, she wasn't sure if she was saying it to him or to herself.

He shook his head. Took a step forwards. She had to restrain herself from taking a step back, because suddenly she was very aware that they were alone in a small, dingy little room, and for some reason his presence was filling up the air. All she had to do was inhale, and she would breathe in the musky scent of him, the sweat. She suddenly didn't want to breathe.

Couldn't, because he'd taken another step forward, and now the glint of his eye was a challenge, and there was barely three inches between them and that was _far too close._

Elika sat back on the bed. Or rather, she let her legs fall and her butt catch her. He might have smirked in the darkness, she couldn't quite tell. But his words were almost conversational when they came, and they contrasted so sharply with his body language, all intent and purpose, that she had to blink again.

"Tell me, Princess. Just who are you trying to convince?"

Her mind froze. She heard her voice run free. "I'm not trying to convince anyone."

"Really?" he seemed amused now, as if two minutes ago she hadn't yelled at him, hadn't been ready to strike him down with the same blue fire that had saved his life time and time again. "That's funny. Because I know you're proud, Princess. And you..."

He was looking at something, she wasn't sure what. She'd let her hands fall from the crooks of her elbows to steady her against the bed, and he was looking down at her, and she might have heard wrong, but his breath seemed to have caught in his throat. She wondered where the cool desert breeze was, given that he'd left the window open behind him. She wondered what he was thinking, what he was doing, and...

His voice cut through her rambling thoughts like a knife. "You," he said, his voice sounding strange. "Should _never_ have to beg."

The oddness of his statement floored her. It was the only excuse she had for blinking again, and then her rather ineloquent response. "What?"

Suddenly he was crouching before her, his face looking up into hers. At this distance, or lack thereof, she could see how intense his eyes were, and they froze her voice in her throat.

"You heard me," he said. And his tone was no longer amused, or distant. It was raw with something that she couldn't identify, scraped with a fire so intense she was surprised she wasn't burning. "You should _never_ have to beg. You're a Princess, a Queen, a fucking _miracle_ and damn it, you stubborn little _bitch_, maybe you don't need me but..."

Without consciously recognising that she was doing it, Elika reached forwards and touched her palm to his cheek. The instant their skin met, she felt him shiver and subside, and suddenly he was turned away from her, eyes no longer boring into her own and claiming her soul, and she was surprised at the sense of loss she felt. At the coldness his soul left behind.

She swallowed. "But?" she asked.

His jaw clenched. His voice broke, stumbled, tripped, picked itself up and shoved itself forwards. He spoke into her hand, rather than to her, as if that imagined substitute was the difference between his life and death. "But... maybe I need you."

Elika blinked.

It was as if a spell had fallen over them both. Her skin was hot and cold at the same time, her empty stomach gnawing on something huge that froze her in spot. He didn't lift his eyes from the floor, and she didn't lift her eyes from him. And somehow, as she traced those well-known features of a face that she would never, ever forget, she realised what he'd done.

He'd followed her.

She'd known that at an intellectual level. Otherwise he obviously wouldn't have been there, in the flesh, confusing the hell out of her. But now she knew it at a level that was frightening, and for once in the last forty-eight hours, Elika felt the echoes fall away.

"You idiot," she said, but it was softer this time, and without malice. Still, he jerked as if stung, his eyes leaping back to hers. The movement took her hand from his cheek, and she left it in the air for a moment, shocked at the sudden coldness in her body. It was as if she'd been holding her fingers to a fire and then suddenly plunged it into ice. He was a fire, he was a firestorm, he was...

He was royally pissed off.

"Idiot am I?" he snapped. The shields were back, there was no sign he'd ever let them down so much, admitted to her something that she couldn't believe he would ever feel, let alone admit. "Well who was the little stupid _moron_ who decided she'd _beg_ on the streets of _Kant'ar_? You're lucky you weren't..."

She pressed a finger on his lips before he could say the word. She was surprised when he just stopped at the touch. Froze. She wondered how she could engender such a reaction. How she could make this vibrant, living soul in front of her, the guy with an ego larger than Ahriman, the man who boasted of horizon upon horizon and never looking back be so still.

And then, then, _finally_, her mind caught up with her, and she remembered what he'd said.

_Maybe, I need you._

_Maybe. I need you._

_Maybe... I need you. _

Three words. They might as well have been another triplet of words that she'd read about in romance scrolls, because she was so stunned at this moment that she wasn't sure she was breathing. She remembered, took a deep gasp, and then regretted it as the scent of _him_ washed over her and made her tingle.

He was looking at her. She had never noticed, not in their forty-eight hours, that his lashes were so long. How the scar on his face, in an odd way, framed his wide, open, expressive eyes. How he could look so guarded, and yet so vulnerable at the same time.

Was this the man she'd been running from?

Was this the man that she'd hated?

Was this the man that she couldn't forgive?

Her finger was still on his lips. They were surprisingly soft. She realised this, and tried to snatch her hand back as if she'd been burnt. _He_ realised her intent a second before she moved, and somehow his own hand flashed up as quick as a desert snake and grasped her around the wrist before she could pull away.

And then, because they were staring at each other so deeply they might as well have been excavating each other's souls, she saw the moment he thought _fuck it _and moved.

Elika had read about first kisses. She wasn't sure if there was any girl her age who hadn't. She knew that romance scrolls tended to overdo it a little, and she'd always doubted that they were _that_ spine-tingling, toe-curlingly amazing. It was just one person's mouth meeting another person's after all.

This was something she hadn't read about. Something she hadn't expected. His mouth crashed into hers with the force of a desert storm, bringing the heat of a thousand fires behind it. She fell back under the surprise of it, he moved forwards with almost predatorial intent, the hand around her wrist pulling her fingers to splay across the bare V of his chest, the other curling around her hair to press her even more firmly into his mouth. It was hot and wet and so shocking that she didn't react for almost three seconds.

And then she started kissing him back.

Her eyes were closed, so she didn't see his leap like a barely banked fire as her tongue began to war with his for domination. His skin burnt under hers, and she suddenly wanted to feel more of it. She hadn't known that things could be rough and smooth at the same time. She hadn't known a lot of things. Her hand began to push at the vest he wore, the other moved to settle itself almost naturally against the band of his pants.

He broke off the kiss with a start, sitting back so fast on his heels she was surprised he didn't fall. His eyes shone in the moonlight as they stared at her.

"Princess?" he rasped, and then, as if the word hurt him. "Elika?"

The question those two words encompassed was so great they boggled her mind. She didn't know how she'd gotten from yelling at him to kissing the life out of him, but the little part of her that she could now admit had felt whole again when he'd showed up in her room snickered and told her it hadn't just been the few minutes he'd spent here. This had been a long time coming.

Ninety-six hours, to be precise.

That knowledge shut her brain down, and suddenly Elika felt herself reduced to a child again. Or, to be more precise, a very, very, aroused woman. "This needs to come off," she told him seriously, tugging at his vest. "Now."

She loved how he was so alive. How his eyes widened fractionally, and then became as round as the sun. "Are you serious?"

"Now," she repeated stubbornly, tugging the offending piece of material again.

The look he gave her was incredulous, but he wasted no time in shrugging it off and then turning his purely masculine gaze on to her. She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. He smirked.

"Like the view, Princess?" he drawled, all self-confidence and bravado again. She thought about shooting him down and decided it would be a waste. He _was_ beautiful. It wasn't as if she _hadn't_ noticed how strong he was, or how lithely his handsome body moved. Heck, she'd even checked out his ass. She giggled at the memory, and suddenly his hands were sliding up her arms, the gauntlet somehow vanished, and his eyes were heated.

"And just what are you laughing about?" he asked. She almost giggled again at the incredulity in his voice. "Nothing to laugh about, Princess. And why are you still clothed?"

She was about to retort when he did something with her hands and her top flicked up and over, leaving a very shocked and outraged Princess staring at a smirking Prince.

"Hey!" her voce most certainly did _not_ just come out as a squeak. "What are you...?"

But he wasn't listening to her. His eyes were soft, almost reverent, and she realised with a start that she hadn't seen this look on him before either. Perhaps she hadn't known him quite as well as she'd thought. "God..." he breathed. The word sounded foreign in his voice - his cynical, practical, almost always blasphemous voice. "You're beautiful."

For a moment insecurity held her in its savage jaws. With the brief reprieve, the feeling of cool air pressing against suddenly bared skin, Elika blinked in remembrance of what he'd revealed that first day to her. He'd had several girls before. He hadn't made a secret of it. How practiced he was with that top-removing trick only proved it. She suddenly wondered how many women he'd whispered those words to, and that made her angry again.

Well, anger was only a little part of it. A vast part wanted to crawl away inside her skin and never look at him again.

Something must have shown on her face, because his eyes snapped away and to hers with an almost feverish intensity. "You don't believe me, do you?"

Elika fought the desire to laugh, to sob, and to slap him. None of them were appropriate, and Ormazd take him if he wasn't being just as pigheaded and stubborn as he had shown himself to be all this time.

He continued, undaunted. "Let me tell you this, Elika." The way he said her name just then, as if it was something unimaginably precious, was the only reason she didn't slap him when he said his next few words. "I've been with a lot of women, but I have _never_ followed their stubborn asses over a desert, let alone stayed and fought an evil God with them."

He leaned forwards then and kissed her. Again. Let her feel the taste of warmth and awe in her mouth like fresh honey. When he pulled away, they were both panting.

"You are beautiful," he said firmly. And perhaps he was emboldened by how she hadn't protested, how she'd kissed him back. Or maybe he was just annoyed enough after following her for two days through the desert that he decided to say the words anyway, damn the consequences. "And, damn it, I have never loved a more infuriating, blind, intelligent, stubborn, intoxicating little minx."

Unsurprisingly, Elika blinked.

It seemed that he realised that he'd gone too far then, because he was suddenly back on his heels, almost crawling away from her. His grin was far too bright, far too sharp in the shadowed room. But before he could say anything, brush it over, laugh it off, Elika swallowed.

"You love me?"

The words sounded stupid and childish as soon as they left her lips, but she couldn't help them. It was a question that begged to be said, demanded to be answered. His eyes, guarded against the inevitable crushing of his hope, widened.

For the second time that night, she saw the moment he decided to toss caution to the winds.

"Of course I do, you _idiot_," he scowled. "Don't you think for a second I would have done any of this for anyone else. Hell... the moment I laid my eyes on you," he chucked, "When you threw yourself onto me... I was gone."

Elika knew she could do several things.

She could reject him. Savagely. Abandon him like she had on the balcony of that forgotten place. She could let him down more gently, but still turn him down nevertheless. She could laugh. She could go into denial. She could ignore him. She could...

So many possibilities, but as their eyes stepped into each other and she saw him, saw the truth laid out like a gleaming oasis before the burning sun, she swallowed.

They weren't touching now. She was so cold. She knew that the instant he touched her, she'd fill with heat again. And she wanted it. The cold in her was incessant now, a cold that not even the magic of her God could fill up. It was the cold of two deaths in less than a week, of a hideously uncertain future hanging over her head, of fear and a responsibility that she wasn't sure she could take, despite all her bravado and pride and her actions.

She didn't want to feel that cold anymore. And perhaps that was why she found herself opening her mouth, and saying in a foreign whisper. "Show me."

He blinked.

She felt oddly proud.

And then he licked his lips, his gaze intense. "You sure?"

She didn't trust herself to words anymore. She nodded.

And then she found herself lying back on the bed, his hands on her bare stomach, caressing her skin. His hands moving higher, cupping her. She gasped at the broad sweeps of his callused fingers on her. He silenced it with a blazing kiss that she eagerly returned, even as his hands moved down further, hooked around the waistband of her pants. He paused for a moment there, as if silently asking permission, and when she arched up into him he took it as a yes and pulled them gently down.

There was little time for awkwardness, or even the shyness that suddenly swamped her body, because his mouth was just as suddenly there, bringing heat to every inch of her. She gasped, and e chuckled against her skin, sending shivers up her spine. "That's it, Elika."

He paused, licked a blazing path again. His next words were tinged with pure male satisfaction. "I want to hear you moan for me."

He swiped an arc across her body with his fingers, and she managed to laugh through the burning ache of her body. "I... oh! I..."

He was doing something sinful with his mouth. She gasped, shuddered, and somehow found the ability to speak coherently again. "... thought you said I should never have to beg."

He nipped at a sensitive part of her that she didn't know she had. "This is different," he said savagely, and she dazedly wondered if she detected a possessive note in that tone. His next words dispelled any illusions. "You're _mine_."

She lay still for a moment, taking that in.

And then she was not still any more. She was up, surging, moving. Taking _him_ by surprise. Pulling her to him, pulling other things down, feeling her hand splayed against his naked back. Because at the heart of her, she was someone who was fair, and she knew that in asking him to give himself to her, she'd given herself to him.

It had just taken a few minutes of his talented ministrations to realise that.

He gasped in her ear. She nipped at him with her teeth, exploring. His hands came up, stroking, loving. She lost herself in a whirl of colours that she hadn't known could exist in darkness, feelings that she didn't know could overcome despair, warmth that she didn't know could finally, finally drive out the cold. And when he whispered her name in her ear as he slid inside, she realised again that she didn't know every inflection with which he could breathe it, and she was seized with an irrational urge to spend forever finding out.

And so she turned, arched, until her lips were next to him; brushing his jawbone, his cheek, and then his ear. And while she wasn't ready to say the three words, even though she knew it in her heart, her soul, and the part of her deep inside receiving him, enveloping him, holding him... she spoke new sounds. New words, to make new echoes that would follow, would embrace them both wherever they went.

Because, finally, she had opened her eyes.

* * *

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A/N - I know this is very, very different from my usual fare. I hope you have enjoyed it nonetheless. Admittedly, this is only the second time I have ever written a scene like this, and as such, I can only hope I did it and the characters justice. Thanks once again for sharing this excitingly crazy ride with me.

-Shadowhawke


	22. In the Moments

**-In the Moments-**

**

* * *

**In this blasted world of ruin, they make their own hope.

Elika lies on her back. The ground is cold and lifeless underneath her. Her eyes find the shadowed sky. "Tell me about the sea again."

He smiles into her skin. It is a worn and cracked smile. "The sea is like you," he whispers. They can't speak too loud for fear of being found again. The blood has not dried from their last battle. It sits, cooling malevolently on his hands and across his cheek, a new scar to match the old one. "It is wild and free. The surface catches the sun and tosses it back, magnifying the light into a million prisms."

Elika frowns. Her voice is small. And bitter. Oh so bitter. "That doesn't sound like me."

The Prince shrugs. He has grown old with guilt and pain and despair that he refuses to feel. The stress of that denial shows on his face. "In a different world, maybe. Or when this is all over."

His voice takes on the hush of wonder. He can still feel that at least, lying next to her, eyes on the foreboding sky. "I can't wait to see you when this is all over."

Elika says nothing, and feels her world grow colder.

* * *

One day, he remembers a game he once played.

"S." He says.

She looks at him. "Stupidity," she replies flatly, crossing her arms.

He grins. "Yeah," he assents. It is all worth it for the look on her face. Because for a moment, he can fool himself that she's smiling.

* * *

Her fingers drift along his back. They have both become toughened, hard. They've had to. She mourns her younger self like another of the child carcasses they have stumbled across. There, was once innocence. There, were once dreams.

Now, she feels like a hollow shell, filled with magic and blasted with despair. The feeling of him under her negates that a little. She remembers warmth.

He turns over, and there is a question in his eyes. They sleep together these days huddled for warmth. For no other reason. She tells herself that, anyway.

She responds to the silent question with a shrug. He looks at her as if she's just recited a poem, a masterpiece, and then cautiously settles his arm around her.

She remembers softness, and would weep if she had any more tears left in her.

* * *

He never expected to live like this.

But in a way, he knows it is a continuation of his life. He has always been about survival. He has always, in some way, engineered his own destruction. This experience is the summary of him.

He looks at the odds. He laughs. His sword is the only thing he has with no flaws now, because he keeps it sharp. He has to. It sails into a Corrupted and swipes its head clean off.

Sometimes all a man needs is an empty horizon. His eyes graze over her as she leaps, somersaults, destroys in a halo of blue fire and righteousness. Right now, what he needs most is to escape the story of his life, and do more than just survive.

For her. His doom. And his new life.

* * *

The day Elika understands how Ahriman really works is the day she becomes more like her companion. The day she stops crying.

They walk into a town. It has been pillaged, burnt, and raped like the others. But what distinguishes it is that no Corruption seethes over the remnants, no slime covers the evidence of the atrocities that have occurred.

The town is just there.

As are the corpses.

As are the perpetrators - the perfectly sober soldiers whom everyone relies on to protect them, laughing in the city square as the last scream cuts off.

Elika stands there, her mouth open, the silent reply to a cruel, cruel joke that she has not quite gotten yet. He stands next to her and puts his hand on her shoulder.

She finds out that Ormazd's magic cuts through human flesh even better than it does with the Corrupted. In the depths of her soul, she wonders what that means.

* * *

He looks at her, and spins up fantasies.

It is his favourite past time. He dreams about what could have happened, of alternate realities with no evil Gods who work on humanity's baser instincts. In this odd little pair, he sometimes feels like he has become the dreamer. Because _someone_ has to. She walks now as if she is an angel who has realised the souls she was sent to save were demons all along. He no longer teases her about her naivete. He wishes, violently, that he still could.

So his world becomes a dream, a wish, a hope. That he will be able to look at her in the sunlight again, and that the circles underneath her eyes will fade. He does not know if the sadness that covers her, thick as bruises, will ever go away. But he hopes. And he dreams.

* * *

They have their hardest fight yet. She is locked in place by Corruption, raging against her helplessness. This Corrupted is a special one. He sold his soul to Hell long before he sold it again to Ahriman. He is old, he is twisted, he is powerful, and he is inside the Prince's mind.

Elika screams. The picture before her is disgusting. The Prince, her Prince, is on his knees, his hands desperately clapped to his temples. The Priest has his rotted hand on his brow in a mockery of a blessing. There is no movement except for her struggles, and she doesn't want to think about what is going on in the mind that has become a battlefield. They have come across victims of the Priest before - some mindblasted souls, some husks empty of all but cruel and malevolent evil. There have been no survivors that have any of the good sides of their humanity intact.

It is in that moment, when her fear overwhelms her reason, that she realises that she loves him. Despite everything. Despite his crimes. She has always known he could die - ever since this journey of theirs has started, death has stalked their steps. But she never, ever thought that he could be turned against her. Never thought that his body could waste away into slime and rot and that she could look into his wide, deep, smirking eyes and see nothing but Ahriman.

She screams and struggles more. The cords of Corruption that bind her are thick, drawn from the horror and misery and sick glee of the wasteland they are in and the God that rules over it all through the evil of mortals. The Priest's control of them are perfect. Until, that is, the Prince suddenly jerks backwards, and the connection is lost.

As soon as the Priest's hand leaves the Prince's brow, the cords fail. She springs up, terror and rage magnifying her power a hundredfold. There is nothing left of him when she is done, not even a shred of Corruption. The land around them in a twelve-foot radius shines with Ormazd's will. Well, His will and hers.

She runs over to the Prince. His eyes are closed. She finds that she has tears again, this time for a different reason.

* * *

When he opens his eyes, it's to her crying. For a moment, he is very, very disorientated.

_What have you done now, you bastard? _A little part of him thinks. A very, very little part. The only part of his mind that doesn't feel as if it has been wrenched open, polluted, and rearranged. _You made her cry._

The thought is so ridiculous he winces and shakes his head. That reintroduces him to a world of mental pain that he didn't want to revisit again. However, it also alerts her to his consciousness, and their eyes meet.

He blinks. There is a fevered, fervid desperation to the way her gaze rakes his. She is looking for something. His confused mind has no idea what it is. He only hopes that in the raw intensity of her search, she finds it.

She does. Her face crumples and suddenly her arms are around him and he is suffused with her light. Ormazd's magic dances around them, illuminating the darkness. The feeling of her washes away some of the taint that the Priest left behind. He closes his eyes again and luxuriates, wishing he could scrub his mind out with scouring soap.

When she kisses him, gently, hesitantly, he finds that he doesn't need it anymore. Elika, this glorious creature kneeling by his side, is clean enough to wash away all his doubts.

When the kiss ends, he blinks. It takes an effort to smirk, but he does it anyway. There is hurt, uncertainty and vulnerability in his raw and exposed soul. He has to know why. He has to know whether some of his dreams are coming true, or if she was lost in a moment of relieved confusion. The smirk is his best shield against destruction. "Not that I'm complaining," he drawls. "But what was that about?"

She is suddenly angry. "You almost... you almost became something worse than dead, and you're asking me that?" She gets to her feet. Her voice is cold again, the moment lost. "You _are_ an idiot."

As she turns to walk away, he mentally agrees with her. "Wait," he calls out.

She stops, but her back is to him. That's okay. He's not sure if he's brave enough to see her face when he says what he's about to.

"How the Priest worked," he says softly. "I figured it out when he was poking around in my head."

She is listening. He can tell. He also tells himself that he has faced down countless Soldiers, Corrupted, and doublecrossed Ahriman Himself. So he can face this.

"He... he gives you this image of your greatest desire," he says quietly. "As he can understand it, anyway. He draws his power from that, from the longing."

He can tell by the way she suddenly stiffens that she is remembering the strength of the coils around her, the Corruption chaining her. Her voice is like a whip. "Your greatest desire is me bound?"

He tries a half-smile. "That's where he got it wrong. That's why I could get loose."

She swings around to him, eyes burning. For once in his life, he averts his gaze so he can finish the sentence.

"The bastard just didn't understand that kind of love," he says quietly, triumphantly. In the afterglow of finally saying that word, he gets the courage to meet her eyes again. "Don't look so surprised, Princess."

She is ephemeral in the light. The light of herself. She walks towards him, slowly, each step deliberate. He wonders if it is the walk of an executioner or a lover. He has, after all, just admitted indirectly that there was more to his damning of the world than his glib justifications afterwards, of her being the only warrior who could put an end to Ahriman's terror permanently. Of course, he knows that she always knew that. But that is part of the dance between them. The silence. The unspoken words. Ones that he has just spoken.

She stops right in front of him. She crouches down. Her face is unreadable. He braces himself. _Always knew she'd be the death of me._

And then she kisses him again.

* * *

Later that night, he kisses the nape of her neck, the crook of her shoulder, the soft skin of her legs. There is a lightness to her in the dark. As they hold each other, as they explore each other, he can feel that the woman underneath him, above him, around him, is no longer as empty as she used to be. Something has been dredged up from deep within her soul. A reminder of why she fought, why she fights.

When the pinnacle is reached, and she throws her head back, he looks on her face in wonder, and remembers his description of the ocean.

_Wild and free, _he thinks. They hold each other close in the aftermath. He cannot stop looking at her, even when she falls asleep.

He never thought he'd be able to see her like this in a Corrupted world. His dreams, his wishes, his fantasies... they have always been of a world after. A healing one.

The fact that she can still be like this is a salve that he knows his damned soul does not deserve. But as he holds her tightly, he also knows that they may also have just discovered the key to defeating Ahriman.

He smiles. A weary smile. Brushes it across the relaxed plane of her brow. And then sleeps, knowing for the first time in a long while that tomorrow may not be just a dream or a wish or a hope, but a reality.

Because in this blasted world of ruin, they make their own hope.

* * *

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A/N: Thanks so much to everyone who commented on the last piece! It's amazing to get such great feedback for trying new and different things. Thank you for giving me the bravery and courage to keep expanding my horizons.

Also, check out some of the amazing artwork by Grafferu on our favourite couple. Just remove the spaces and replace the 'dot' with an actual '.'

http://rawgraff(dot)deviantart(dot)com/gallery/#Prince-of-Persia

-Shadowhawke


	23. The Spire of Dreams

**The Spire of Dreams**

**

* * *

**

**WARNING: Gory descriptions and mentions of torture. Probably the darkest story in this whole little collection. Also a very _different_ story from the others in this collection. This one definitely deserves an M rating.**

* * *

_When dreaming ends and dreaming comes,_

_And life spills forth in harshest light,_

_Mourn not the dream for all it's done,_

_But dream again when it is night._

_

* * *

_

Elika had dreamt of many paths, of many endings. After all, she had spent most of her life, whether on the Spire of Dreams or in the gardens or in the sanctity of her own room, dreaming.

She had never dreamt it would end like this.

In too many of them to count, she had been a saviour, a fighter, a warrior on par with the legends she had grown up with. Her imagination had always been prodigious, but she'd had an excuse; she shared her home with the ghosts of a myth, so it really wasn't just girlish dreaming. It was possibility, potential, future.

In a few others, the girlish ones, the _fun_ ones, she'd sometimes been the Princess rescuing the Prince. The image of the Prince had been hazy when she'd been younger. He was handsome, she knew that. And also inherently good. Probably a Prince of her people, even though that was impossible. There had already only been a handful of people left in the City, after all. And those who had gone out had never come back. She wasn't even sure if a royal member had ever left. And if he'd come back, he wouldn't have been inherently good, because he or his ancestors would have left. And young, teenaged Elika could not abide the thought of anyone betraying their destiny, their duty like that.

But it was all right, because impossible things could happen in dreams.

And in life. She could, if she wanted to, summon the memories that skirted at the edge of her mind now. The ones where she had finally relinquished her stubbornness and her pride and her hatred a month ago and let him in. She could, if she wanted to, remember the way he had kissed her neck and the light in his eyes - a passionate, alive thing that could warm as well as burn. So different from the light she wielded as a weapon, to sear and cut away all impurities. She could, if she wanted to, remember the sound of his voice shaping "I love you."

And the sound of her own voice echoing the sentiment back.

But she didn't. Instead, she stepped lightly in the sand now, although her feet felt like lead and her legs like iron. The desert was gray and black around her, the dunes both familiar and not. She had seen her home like this before, months ago. The image was emblazoned in her mind. The desert hadn't changed all that much, the Corruption had just sunk in deeper, and the sight brought bile to her throat.

It was still home.

Elika stopped at the mouth of the canyon where, months ago, he had fallen to a doom no one could have ever predicted. Where he'd met her. She smiled grimly. The sun had been high and the sand gold then, and he had smiled so easily, and followed her as if he hadn't had a care in the world.

She took a breath, and stepped into air. But before gravity could snatch her and send her tumbling down, head over dextrous heels like he had once fallen, the magic streaming under her skin unfolded its wings.

Elika rode the emptiness of Ormazd's light down and down. When her feet touched rock, her mind briefly flashed to running. Running, falling, landing on a surprised heap of hardened muscle and boyish grin. She almost, _almost_ smiled at the memory. Things had been so much simpler then.

She paused for a moment to get her bearings. The Temple, always her landmark, was still a while away. And beyond that the Spire of Dreams awaited.

_Home._

Elika chased away the images of her reclining on the top as a seven year old, as a thirteen year old, as a fifteen year old, exhausted but triumphant after the long climb. Then she gave up. The memories were going to haunt her anyway. She might as well indulge in the happier ones while she walked. The Spire was still far away enough that she could allow herself that, at least.

She took a deep breath and began to move. She remembered the walls she'd skated across, the outcrops she'd leapt from, the high wall she'd tried to use both as a shortcut to the Temple and as a way to lose him. Every step whispered never-forgotten words at her.

_Hey, wait up! _

_At least tell me your name!_

_You might want to time your advice better next time. _

She paused at the destroyed bridge where Amir and Salman's rocks had almost ended him before it began. This was where she had discovered the extent of her power. She remembered how giddy, how intoxicating, how exhausting, how _frightening_ that had been. Because while a part of her had still been crying in terror and anger at what her father had done, at what her powers meant, the rest had been marvelling. Some of her dreams had come true. She had been endowed with powers not seen in the Ahura for generations. And she'd known then, for sure, that she was going to be the saviour of her people.

It had been an amazing, almost ecstatic feeling. A feeling that had lodged her with purpose and sacrifice and sureness and light.

Now, Elika stepped into the abyss and drifted, empty. Blue light surrounded her, wrapped her in its tendrils and bore her over the darkness of the gaping maw of Corruption that the canyon had become. But she felt no ecstasy, no awe.

There was only a grim, hopeless certainty. No anger, no rage even. The months of her hatred and the black bitterness of his betrayal had been shoved somewhere to the corner of her mind ever since she had received Ahriman's vision.

Elika reached the other side without mishap, without faltering, and without emotion. She continued down to where Behrab had confronted them; _You will not stand between us and the Princess,_ and where _he_ had learnt who she was. The cynical surprise in his voice hadn't ever featured in her teenage dreams. Her imagined Prince had always rejoiced, or been in awe, or had love woven into every aspect of his being before she'd conducted his miraculous rescue.

Elika had just enough feeling left to snicker at that. It was a low, ugly sound. And then she stepped off the cliff and shut her eyes, trusting the magic that wreathed her to bring her down safely onto the plains where the Temple stood.

Her powers had grown since then. Since the fall of the Temple. Since they'd found the last pockets of her people and they had willingly given their sudden powers to her. _That_ she hadn't expected. She had left the Underground City with the dream of finding the last of the Ahura and forming an army with them, a small, dedicated army that would see Ahriman's fall. Instead, she had found frightened youth and petrified grandmothers and grandfathers, all who had known nothing of their heritage, their startling new powers, and why swarms of Corrupted were suddenly targeting them and their families and making their lives Hell on Earth.

A part of her had been jealous at the relief on their faces when they'd passed the magic to her. Given Ormazd's light freely up, seeing it as the curse that had led them to danger or torture or worse and not as the shining proof of their duty to save the world.

A part of her had just hated them.

Still, with her power amplified, magnified, made manifold, Elika had become what she'd dreamed of. The saviour. Ormazd's chosen. The swathes of Corrupted that had leapt at them had been obliterated. As her power had grown, so had his experience and cunning and downright nastiness, and even as her light had blasted apart the darkness, his gleaming sword had disembowelled it.

In retrospect, they really should have seen it coming.

Elika didn't look at the Temple as she walked into the caverns, as she floated across the empty spaces and soared over the places where the bridges had been eaten away and she and the Prince had once leapt and clung and climbed. It was a far cry from the time she'd tried to reach the Spire of Dreams and died the first time. She simply walked through the air, radiating power, and wondering if Ahriman could feel it.

If _he_ could feel it.

Elika closed her eyes and let the magic navigate for her. Now that she was closer, she could see the depths to which her home had sunk, and she didn't want to. Months of Ahriman making his physical home here, months of Corruption and sludge and slime had cleared away whatever beauty and light this place had left. There were no more beams or even flagpoles to climb from. They had rotted away and collapsed under the onslaught, and she couldn't blame them.

So it had been the perfect place for them to take him. Because even if they had slipped, he couldn't escape.

Elika did not even try to push away the thought of him trying to escape, falling, being tortured, dying, being Corrupted, in pain, trapped. She simply burned the images, watched the ashes of them fly away into the emptiness of her heart, and kept walking. The gates to the Royal Palace yawned at her now, the Cavern almost half filled with dankness and death. Even with the Concubine gone, it was a foul place once more. Other Corrupted had taken over. She floated above it all and kept her eyes closed and on better times. Better dreams.

The monster who had held her imagined Prince had often changed. Sometimes it would be the dragons she read about late at night, other times it would be Ahriman, simply because he was the cautionary tale she lived and breathed every day of her life. In fact, if she thought about it, it was the fear of Ahriman that had first inspired her to dream. Living in the constant shadow of a legend like that _kills people, eats the naughty children_, she had _had_ to dream to stay sane, to stay not swallowed up by the fear of the thing that seethed underneath her home. She had had to dream, and dream harder, and more, and greater.

Elika smiled. It was an empty one. She remembered dreaming about wielding swords heroically and flying on magic to save him. She'd constructed elaborate plans according to the monster at the time. The Prince would always be tied up and helpless...

_The vision Ahriman had sent her flashed back. The Prince's face was wide and hollowed, the eyeballs dug out and Corruption poured in. The gauntlet dripped blood and slime and the body he'd fought by her side with and she'd admired was wrapped in Ahriman's filth. And all the while, as she screamed in her head, Ahriman laughed as she realised that _**he**_ was the monster she was meant to fight..._

... and she would battle valiantly with sword and shield against the dragon, or trick Ahriman into sealing himself away forever with Ormazd's guidance and her own sense of blazing rightness. And when the monster was defeated, she'd untie the Prince, and he would look at her in awe, and she would feel that she was truly a hero.

Elika crossed the threshold and saw the Spire of Dreams tower above her. At the sight, her dreams, the old ones, turned to poison in her throat. She coughed dryly, eyes tearing up as she looked into a sky filled with motionless motes of Corruption and death. The stone had withstood the onslaught of evil so far, the testament to Dreams as coldly grand in the darkness as it had been beautifully uplifting in the light. But somehow, so close to the end of everything, of all she had ever dreamed, Elika could no longer reach her childhood fantasies. In the light of what she knew awaited her, they melted away from her grasp, Corrupted. Like everything else in this place.

Elika moved to the foot of the Spire, and then looked up. She remembered the endless elevators, the leaps from plate to plate, his wild whoops as she'd tossed him through the air, and then she burned those memories too. They were too painful, and she would have enough pain awaiting her when she reached the top.

Besides, things were different now. Elika felt the massive reservoir of power inside her, willingly surrendered by the dregs of her people and amplified by the stench of Ahriman's evil in the imbalance of Ormazd's absence. And she thought, _up._

And the light lifted her.

It burned like blue flame in a radius around her, eating up the Corrupted ash and leaving her vision and throat clear. But spiralling on Ormazd's wings as she was, it was a long way up to the top. Elika used that time to reflect on her mistakes, hardening herself against what was to come, and preparing herself for the end of all dreams.

The first mistake, really, had been to involve him with all this. It hadn't exactly been her fault - he had been rather... persistent. Idiotic. She allowed herself a slight smile, because it would likely be the last one she'd ever feel, and because it was the memory of _him_.

The second mistake had been to expect he would just walk away.

The third mistake had been to grow attached. To need him. To rely on his streetwise skills and swordsmanship to survive and find her people. To use that as an excuse to keep around a murderer, a grave robber, and a criminal so heinous there was no words for his crime of saving her. To grow to... love him.

Elika could allow herself to think that now, when he wasn't there, when everything was ending. There was no point in denial when truths much harsher faced her at the top.

Elika let loose a shuddering sigh, and turned to the last mistake. The biggest one. Her own small, petty crime.

Dreaming.

Collecting the power had given her wings, made her feel like an Avenging Angel, had made her feel powerful. Powerful enough to pose the Dark God a serious threat, given the way He had panicked and wasted his forces and strongest Corrupted on them, even when she had shown she could obliterate five of them with one blast of light and her Prince could trick three of them to their doom with one carefully laid trap and one exultant, defiant cry. She had thought that they might have a chance, then. She had dared to hope. Dared to lie in his arms at night and feel loved and safe and allow herself to dream of a better life afterwards. Had dared to think they might have grown powerful enough together to defeat the most horrific nightmare to stalk humanity's nightmares and her own.

But the tower of their own strength had had clay feet that she hadn't noticed, until she had woken up one morning to find he hadn't returned from his scouting mission that night. And then Ahriman's vision had slapped her full in the face.

Elika glanced at the spire. Three quarters of the way to the top now. Drifting through air like this, with so much space underneath her to the ground, made her feel ethereal. Almost ghostlike. She didn't feel real with this much magic, this little emotion, and no dreams to buoy her. The only thing left was her determination, and her horror, and she wove both of them grimly now to recollect Ahriman's vision, searching for one last clue before she reached the end.

_Dark flashes. The echo of a furious cry, the sound of slick metal, and then a scream._

"_I have your Prince."_

_The silhouette of the Spire. The lovingly inked details of him chained at the top, his body stretched out like a living canvas to all the tortures Ahriman could inflict. A close up of his open, agonised face._

"_You will come."_

_Images of her head bowed. Of her home as it was, and then as it was now - a destroyed, dead thing. _

She had resisted the vision at that point. Thrown all her will and Ormazd's light against the foul touch of Ahriman's mind on her own. Ahriman had laughed then. Laughed horribly until she had bled out of her ears.

"_You won't come to save your Prince? I'll be sure to tell him that."_

_A close up of his face again, only this time it wasn't just his face that was agonised. His eyes held a soul-deep horror that could never be removed, and even as his mouth was sewn together his eyes screamed and screamed and screamed..._

"_Fine, then. I'll sweeten the deal. You and me, __**Princess**__. Or rather, you and __**him**__."_

_A different image, now. Her Prince waited on top of the Spire, but he was no longer chained._

"_I will break him. I know tortures this world has never seen before, will never see again. And when he sells his soul to me to end the pain..."_

_He stood tall instead, his hand on the hilt of his sword. It was exactly the same stance he'd held and then dropped as she'd healed that Fertile Ground the first time. But this time, his face was wide and hollowed, the eyeballs dug out and Corruption poured in. The gauntlet dripped blood and slime and the body he'd fought by her side with and she'd admired was wrapped in Ahriman's filth. _

At that image, she had screamed and screamed and screamed, and fought Ahriman with all her strength until it felt like her mind might rip and the insides of her eyelids might char. But Ahriman had kept enough of a hold on her for one last gloating send-off.

"_**I will become him. I will bind myself to mortal flesh, and then with him, I will defeat you and end this."**_

The reverse promise was implicit. If she ended Ahriman in the Prince's body, then his reign was over. Forever.

And that was why she had travelled for two weeks, back to a place she'd never thought she'd see again, never _wanted_ to see again in the darkness and under all these layers of Corruption, and why she hovered now, just below the lip of the edge.

Elika closed her eyes. She had dangled her legs over this edge once. Had rested her chin on her hands and peered over, lying flat against the top, and looked down and imagined rescuing an imaginary, perfect Prince, and living happily ever after.

And then, not that long ago, she had met her real Prince. A man of shadows and grey. Who loved her like a man with his eyes wide open, and who had held her like a man cradling stars. And in that embrace she had dreamed that one day, they would defeat Ahriman together and leave the darkness behind them, and she could finally get her day by the ocean with her Prince.

Elika took a breath, burned that final dream, that final memory, and ascended into reality.

* * *

The first thing that struck her as she reached the top was that Ahriman hadn't lied. The nightmare in front of her was exactly the same as in the vision. The Prince stood there, his scarves dancing around him in the hellish air. Slime dripped over the place where he'd once proudly bared his rippling abdominals, and his sword gleamed with darkness. Elika forced herself to look at him and found it wasn't difficult. The emotions and dreams she had emptied herself of as she had journeyed to reach this point no longer clawed at her with barbed nails. She had one dream left to her now - a tattered, grey thing. End Ahriman, and everything in her way.

Including him.

Elika raised her hand and felt the heat of the blue fire begin to burn. She would wait until it became incandescent, and then she would throw it, and it would melt through his Corruption-tainted skin before he and his sword could reach her. It would only take three seconds. A mere breath in the waking horror of her life.

... and there. Elika firmed her stance, readied herself to sear her Prince's flesh off, and...

Stopped.

He wasn't moving. The Prince wasn't moving. Even though she knew it wasn't the Prince anymore, and just a hollowed out being who had sold his soul, it seemed wrong that he _wasn't_ moving. The man she knew, the lover she'd had, would have sauntered towards her. Would have danced around her with words. Would have opened his mouth and let all hell merrily spring loose.

But this thing just stood there.

It was the memory of the place that did it. Elika blinked and opened her eyes wider and suddenly it was six months ago, when the Concubine had laughed while her Prince had gone round and round, slashing at the still, silent images of her while she had railed, invisible, in the seething mass of the Concubine's corruption until his faith in her had dissolved the trap.

Elika blinked again, and then narrowed her eyes and stared at the hideous apparition in front of her. She couldn't jump over the edge and expect that to work, because that had never been how he had saved her. But she could walk up to him, within sword-length, and speak quietly to his slimy, grinning face.

"You're not real," she whispered, and then she absorbed the weapon in her palm back into herself and thought of light instead. Light that didn't cut; light that shone so brightly the lies of the darkness dissolved into nothingness.

Dimly, through the haze of light, Elika heard a scream of rage echoing in Ahriman's dual tones. And then the image of the Corrupted Prince disappeared, and she saw instead another one, one that almost broke even her empty, shredded heart.

The Prince. Her Prince. Still chained, his eyes still put out, his body still a masterpiece of suffering and agony. Two weeks, Ahriman had had him. She was horrified to realise she was almost glad his eyesockets were bloodied, empty things, because that meant she didn't have to see the depth of insanity and pain in them.

But most importantly of all...

Still alive, and whole, and _him_.

Elika rushed forwards with a low cry. Ormazd's light surged around her, buffeted and intensified in the crystallised pain of her hope and her anguish. She stumbled to his side, laid a trembling palm on his gory cheek, kissed his bloodied forehead, tried to curl her fingers around the mess of bone and skin and muscle that had once been his hand. She heard a low snarl behind her, knew it to be Ahriman, but didn't care. He couldn't enter this little sanctuary she had made, on top of a desolate, hell-blasted tower in the middle of a Corrupted city. The light was too bright. It would end him.

"My Prince," she heard herself murmur. "My Prince, my Prince. Oh, Ormazd, I'm here. I'm here for you. I'm here."

More words. Most of them nonsensical. They flowed from her lips like a river, coming from places she thought she'd torched and destroyed. Emotions, pure and sweet and terrified and amazed and in awe.

Somewhere along the way, they morphed into a repetition and variation surrounding just three words. Words that he deserved to hear with all his heart. Words touched by incomprehension of his sacrifice, his strength, but an understanding of how much he meant to her that she had burnt all of her dreams for him.

"I love you. I love you. Oh Ormazd, I love you. I love you. I'd never leave you. I love you. I love you..."

The stream was broken, not by the incandescent howl of rage outside her sphere of safety, but by him. Elika stopped, her ears disbelieving, as he shifted underneath her and licked his bloodied lips. When his voice came, it wasn't the smooth, toe-curling one she remembered. It was hoarse and scratched with the barbs of a thousand screams. But it was still _him_. And that he was even speaking was a miracle.

"E...lika."

She cried. Tears fell onto his upturned face, slipped into his mouth, gave him his first drink in two weeks of something that wasn't Corrupted water or his own blood. He somehow found the strength to lick them up, to taste her grief and to form more words around them.

"Didn't... give up. Knew... you'd come."

Her arms were around him. That was how she felt the strength beginning to ebb away from him, the will, the life. She kissed his forehead again. His cheeks. His lips. She couldn't seem to stop herself crying. The emotions and memories and dreams that she thought she'd burned, she'd put away, rolled back over her in a tsunami that no force on earth could stop. He was dying. She knew it like she knew herself, knew her own power, and knew the future.

"I love you," she repeated, softly. What did one say to a dying man? What did one say to a dying lover? What did one say to _him_, the Prince who had held on for two weeks and not sold his soul, when anyone else would have sold the world as well?

"I love you," she said again. He sagged. Sheer will had kept him strong against Ahriman's endless temptations, endless tortures, and then endless rage when neither of them had made him succumb. Sheer will had kept him alive to see her, and know that he had done his part.

He had strength left for one word, though. One word, that he managed to fill with a million things, and a million words, and enough _I love yous _to end the world and make all the poets run out of ink.

"_Elika_," he whispered.

And then he died.

Elika did not know how long she stayed, knelt over his body, rocking him to her chest. But when she laid him gently down, something had changed. The light in her had once felt like it spilled into a sea of strength; all of Ormazd's light left on earth collected in one small, mortal vessel to challenge the might of a dark God. But now she felt like an endless reservoir, an ocean that stretched out to the boundaries of time. She could not name everything that had fed the change. But she knew that her agony, and his, and her memories, and his, and her dreams, and his, had solidified under the pain into a crystal, sharp and beautiful, that reflected and refracted the light. She thought of it now, a little bundle held against her soul, making her powerful, and then turned to face her enemy.

He was smaller than she remembered. Just a dark shadow surrounded by a blanket of blackness, just as she was sure she was now just the centre of a vast mist of light. She remembered the towering nightmare of her bedtime stories, the legendary God of her fears, and saw how small he'd made himself. How he'd spent himself on the failed attacks against the both of them one month ago. How the growing hope of her name and her power had swept across the lands and deprived him of his need for fear and hate and distrust. How he had poured his last efforts and darkness into torturing a mortal Prince who would not break. The panic and rage and fear that had ensued.

Elika looked at him now, her worst nightmare to combat her greatest dreams, and smiled. Ahriman was still a God, but all that had happened and her Prince had worn him down. And now it was her turn.

Elika closed her eyes, and thought of light.

Light. It poured out of her, unfolded in ribbons and flowers of magic. She let it surge, and surge, and surge. Let the crystal of their memories and their pain and their dreams magnify it to star-like proportions. As if from far away, she could hear Ahriman screaming pitifully, a dead, dying thing whose time was over. She let the light extend...

And then she turned it into flame.

Elika felt herself burning up. She willingly gave over her body, her mind, her heart to the fire. She turned her memories in, her pain, her dreams. She let the crystal sit in the center and turn everything incandescent. She rode the flame, rode the white-hot agony of the magic, and clung to consciousness and life long enough only to hear Ahriman's final scream.

And then it ended.

Elika's consciousness floated up. She remembered this, from the last few times she had died. Freed of a body now, she floated, and she saw with an inhuman clarity the fire she had started continuing; burning the last shreds of Ahriman's taint and spreading to consume the Corruption on the Spire, and then spilling over the edge to begin the process of cleansing the rest of the land.

Elika soared. She watched as death turned to life, as sunken ground spilled into green, as grass grew and the air cleared and the sun shone again. And then she realised she was not alone.

He was there, with her. Even after all the torment he'd gone through, and even with all his crimes, his soul was a beautiful, dazzling, strong thing. She reached out a ghostly hand, and he reached out his, and their fingers intertwined.

Touching his soul was something she had no words to describe. Looking into his whole, beautiful eyes was different. Where once they'd been the mirror of his soul, now they were the mirror to the future, and Elika saw light.

She saw an ending she had never dreamt. The end of memories. The end of dreaming. She had rescued the Prince and the Prince had rescued her. They had saved the world.

And Elika's soul _smiled_.

* * *

.

.

.

.

* * *

A/N - Apologies for the long break will never be enough, so suffice to say that I thank you all from the bottom of my soul for still reading and sharing this journey with me even after I thought my inspiration had run dry. And thank you to PausetheTragicEnding, who reminded me that this collection still existed, and that I should dig deeper for inspiration and not give up on this or on myself.

-Shadowhawke


	24. Interlude: Dreams

**Interlude - Dreams**

* * *

She didn't expect to dream, tonight of all nights.

She was walking in a field. The grass was warm beneath her feet, touched by an unseen sun, and she walked in light and heat. That in itself made her realise that it was a dream. After all, in Ahriman's world, there was beauty aplenty. Corrupted beauty, that was - hollow and sick at the core.

Flowers.

Her attention drifted, she found herself bending down. Now that she was looking, she realised the grass was dotted with blue petals, wreathed by green leaves and light. The buds were such a light, heavenly blue she almost thought they glowed. It was enough to make her sit, make her reach out tremblingly for them, make her stroke the softness. She leaned forwards, inhaled their fresh, breathy scent. The unreality of it all combined with the warmth and the light brought heat to her eyes.

_I never want to wake up. _

"Pretty."

It was flat, almost bored, a shrug in words. Her head jerked up, her reverie lost. And then her eyes flattened.

"You," she said venomously. The flower she was touching crumbled to ash under her fingers, an ignominious, odd patch in the beautiful, unearthly field. "It's not enough you have to damn the world, you have to haunt my dreams as well? _Again_?"

The Prince cocked his head, eyes glimmering sharp and bright with amusement. They were colder than she remembered, though. They were bringing ice into this place of warmth and refuge. She frowned. Another crime to chalk up on his list.

"A field, hey?" he began to walk, idly kicking at the ground, ripping up tufts of grass by the root. Elika felt a clench of physical pain in her head and recoiled. He seemed to take pleasure in that, a grim, happy smile spreading across his face. "I'm surprised. I would have thought that you'd be dreaming about the ocean, you know? You've always wanted to see the ocean."

He paused, scanning her, as if he was looking intently for something that he wasn't sure he would ever find. "Isn't that odd?"

Another pain, this time just below the crook of her eyebrow. She hissed, her fingers tightening on the ground. The grass shrivelled beneath her touch. She didn't notice. Couldn't see. Her eyes were on him, and it was like she was seeing him for the first time.

She'd been angry at him when he'd released Ahriman. Oh yes. If anger could even be used to describe the towering pit of fury and rage and despair that she had teetered at the edge of every time she thought of him. But now...

It went beyond hatred and loathing, emotions that she'd already felt. Elika realised for the first time that he was evil. He had to be, to be looking at her the way he was now, seeming satisfied when that increasing pain in her head showed itself in a grimace, or the ache throbbed through to her eyes.

The idea struck her dumb. Somewhere, somehow, the part of her that knew she was dreaming was screaming at her, but she couldn't hear it, couldn't know it. Elika got up, slowly. The world around her seemed to almost be dissolving in the heat of her utter contempt, her black realisation. The air, once heavy and sweet, was pressing in on her now like smoke.

"You... you are..."

She couldn't get the word out. Pain was holding her head, massaging it with an iron, spiky grip. Elika gasped and fell, expecting to meet the thud of dirt.

She didn't. Somehow, she fell _through_ the field, and into the darkness.

The last thing she heard was a whisper. It sounded tired, sad, at complete odds with the smirk on his face that had unleashed her.

"One day you'll thank me, Princess. I think."

* * *

She woke up.

She was lying on a battlefield. Grey stone ate at her back, pressed uncomfortably against her ankle and hip. Elika groaned as she rolled over. A breath in brought an uncomfortable spray of dust and rock into the air and her nose. By the time she was done, the sneezing amplifying the dull, throbbing pain in her head, she was completely miserable.

And then, she became gradually aware of a light hand at her back. She stood up from it, stepped away. Looked away. The gauntlet fell.

"What happened?" she rasped. Her throat was dry. She looked around and felt memories swimming back to her. Then, unwillingly, she focused back on him. The churned earth and the steaming splatter of corruption across almost every inch of the stone plaza except the place she'd been lying on were giving her some clues, and she was beginning to guess, but...

"The Hypnotist got you," he said. He looked tired, ragged, like he had the headache to end all headaches. She felt vindictively pleased. Something had to compensate for the counterpart thudding away inside her own skull. The pleasure soured as he struck an unaffected pose, sheathing his sword and shrugging carelessly. "I had to balance getting him spitted on my sword with trying to figure out how to get inside both of your heads and wake you up."

She somehow wasn't surprised when his lips curled into a smirk. "Have to say, I did a brilliant job of both, don't you think?"

She looked around. Judging by the splatters, he had somehow managed to make the Corrupted explode while wending his way inside her mind. She blinked. The smirk turned into a grin.

"Well?"

She shook her head, slowly, and then regretted it. Vestiges of anger were still weaving their way through the currents of her belly, and that didn't help with the nausea either. "Are you sure it didn't just... run away through the Corruption?" she muttered. "They can do that, you know."

His grin turned into a full-fledged smile, almost innocent in its purity and mirth. Almost. "Hey now, Princess. Don't be a bad sport. Just because this means I'm up to 43 and you're still on..."

"56," she said flatly, pinning him with a glare. She decided it was important to get up, because if she didn't now, she wouldn't be moving for the next day. "And this one counts, I helped distract it."

She went on before he could interject. "Not to mention, we wouldn't be playing this stupid game at all if you hadn't released Ahriman in the first place."

She waited, anticipating the effect. There were a lot of things these days that could bring a halt to their easy banter, and that was the way she liked it. Control. But to her surprise, his smile didn't even falter.

"That one's getting old, Princess," he chuckled. "You know what I'm more interested in hearing about?"

She rolled her eyes exaggeratedly, dusting off the battle debris from her pants, half her mind already moving ahead to the next Corrupted to hunt down while the other half dallied behind with him. "What?"

She was given one second's warning before the smile turned back into a smirk. "Just what you've been dreaming about."

His arms were crossed. She crossed her own in the moment before she opened her mouth to demand what he meant, and then remembered.

_It's not enough you have to damn the world, you have to haunt my dreams as well? __**Again**__?"_

He saw the realisation, she saw that he saw the realisation, and she let him know unequivocally how annoyed she was. "You're an ass."

He laid a hand on his heart. "An ass who is deeply, truly honoured to be a frequent guest in your dreams." His eyes twinkled. "Care to tell me what we've been doing?"

There was no answer to that. Elika walked away, trying to maintain the shreds of her dignity, while behind her, he laughed, and laughed and laughed.

And inside her, she registered the sound and held it like a sunrise - a rare and beautiful thing in Ahriman's world, and kept walking. Following a dream.

Both of them.

* * *

.

.

.

.

* * *

**A/N**: Hey everyone,

I know I haven't written in a long time. For that I apologise. I've realised, recently, that the most unfair thing is that I haven't let everyone know why. The simple reason of it is that I've decided to finally act upon a lifelong dream I've had - to publish an original novel. And so I've decided that I'd like to complete a draft of it before I get back to fanfiction.

This fic is not dead. I love PoP too much, it's just that when I'm trying to write original things, inspiration for the one-shots comes in short supply. But I do still have ideas, and I'm still humbled and awed and extremely thankful for all of the support and feedback these stories have gotten. Thank you all again for your time and sharing this journey with me, and especial thanks to PauseTheTragicEnding, whose timely reminder of today being Christmas made me realise I should totally write something for all of you.

With that in mind, this interlude was meant as just a small Christmas present or a present for whatever holiday you celebrate on this day. :)

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays,

-Shadowhawke


	25. Hope

**Hope**

She is stone.

She is hard wood and grass, whiplike now in the dark desert, shorn thin by Corruption. Elika lives each day as it is - a nightmare. There is no keeping track. She measures time with sleep - naps caught between constant battle, rests snatched from the harrying jaws of navigating treacherous terrain.

And just as treacherous company.

"Elika?"

Her jaw twitches. She refuses to look at him. "What?"

There is silence in this world - a dead, cold silence. Or perhaps even silence is the wrong word. Silence implies peace, implies thinness, implies the slow pauses between living and dancing. No. The correct word is void. There is a void in this world, an empty space where the sounds of the living should be.

There is only them.

Only his voice. Everything else has been sucked through the void. She no longer hears the sweet cries of desert birds, or the scratchings of a sly cat. There is no symphony of insects, burrowed amongst the sand. She even misses the flies. She never thought she would.

But she does, when there is only his voice, and hers, and the sound of their shoes slipping and sliding over sand and corruption.

Her patience grows thin now, at his silence. He has no right to start something off like this and not finish it. Every time he does, her nonexistent trust in him wanes even further. He has already betrayed her. She can expect nothing less.

"Well?" she snaps, finally turning around to face him. Her voice is like this desert. Dry and harsh. "What is it?"

He is crouching in the dust, his hard face unreadable. He looks almost ugly in the shadows sometimes. Weariness and battle have worn him down. And her. She knows that the mask he wears constantly now is to protect himself from the verbal daggers she tosses his way, at every opportunity she can. She doesn't care. She likes it on him. It makes him ugly.

He is so oddly silent.

These thoughts stop when she sees what he is holding. He has it gently cupped in his hand, as if he is trying to catch water in a desert, or perhaps hope in Ahriman's world. His face is unreadable, but his eyes are soft as they slowly move from the flower in his hand to her.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

His voice is raspy, but it is warm. Warm like forgotten light, like the evening sun. She feels it reach across her ice, curling soft tendrils around her, urging her to thaw.

She doesn't. Or at least she tells herself that she doesn't.

Her voice is caught in her throat now, tangled up in something like shock. "Where... where did you find that?"

He smiles. The mask is gone. He is still hard, that is who he is, but the mask is gone. She never could wear him down, she thinks irately. Not entirely. "Stumbled across it just then, Princess. I would call it luck, except I really don't believe in it."

The flower is small, a puff of colour that seeps into her soul with its quiet beauty, even in the shadows. There seem to be a million small petals, petals that arc from the centre like a world. It lies in the center of his palm like an epiphany she can't grasp.

"Here."

He is offering it to her. Her jaw is frozen, still too lined with bitterness and shock to hang open. There should be nothing living here. They have found nothing living here. And yet, there is a flower in his hand, one that looks as alive as anything can be in Ahriman's world.

And he is offering it to her.

She takes it before she can think, before she remembers the sense of betrayal that she keeps carried around with her, tucked away at the back of her stomach like a pocket of stone. It is light and beautiful in her hand. The petals brush soft against her skin. She almost closes her fingers around it, almost crushes and ends its ebbing life in a moment of sheer wonder.

She remembers herself, but not before her magic uncurls and glows in her palm, bathing the flower in light.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

He says the words again, heavier this time. She doesn't understand why. The flowers are blue in the light of Ormazd. A rich, perfect blue, like the sky should be.

Like it would have been, if he hadn't damned them all.

She throws the flower away.

Liquid Corruption has not claimed this part of the desert yet, but the sand is gray and lifeless and she knows the plant will die. She considers stepping on it for extra measure, grinding her heel in it like she'd like to grind it in his face if she didn't need him so much. But instead, she keeps walking.

Eventually, the mask slipped back on and his teeth bared in a low grimace, so does he.

Neither of them see the impossible.

The flower floats to the grey, lifeless sand, and young stubs of root sink in. They find potential, and the seeds lie dormant.

And eventually, in the complete absence of sunlight... it grows.

* * *

~.~

~.~

~.~

~.~

* * *

A/N - I... turned 20 today. It's been an odd birthday, completely unlike any I've ever had before. I had a lot of time to sit and think, and to reflect on where I'm going. And one thing I decided to solidify for myself was that at the core foundation of my identity, the keystone everything is built on, I am a writer. I am a writer, no matter how awful my writing can be sometimes, and I suppose I wanted to celebrate that with this little one-shot.

So thank you. Thank you for being a part of that. Thank you for your patience, your kindness... and most of all, for sharing these worlds and words with me.

-Shadowhawke


	26. The Dreamer

**The Dreamer**

* * *

"What would you dream of, if you could dream?"

It doesn't sound right coming from his mouth. Too airy, too haunting, too light. Elika frowns, and wraps her arms around her knees. They've foregone a fire tonight, it's too risky. The desert wind feels almost colder than death. When she speaks, the words come out like the crunch of snow. "I am _not_ doing this with you."

It's dark, with no moon, and no stars. The shadows of Ahriman hang suspended over the sky. Even though she can't see, she knows to her irritation that his blue eyes are calmly fixed on her.

"Come on, Princess," he says lazily. He's coiled up on the sand like a big cat, or maybe a snake. How he stays warm in that tattered, ripped excuse for a shirt, she has no idea. "It's a simple question." His voice slips back into an almost crooning caress, one that has too much sibilance and too much night. "What would you dream of, if you could dream?"

Elika breathes deeply. She counts to ten, in the ancient, sacred language of the Ahura. Sometimes, she's afraid she's the only mortal left in the world who understands it. After she's done, she still wants to clench her fists and maybe throw one into his face. She's sure he's smirking. She's _sure_.

She restrains herself with an effort. "No," she says, and this time ice gilds her voice. She stands. She is willing to damn him and perhaps her too if it will get them some peace tonight. They have a long day tomorrow. "I am _not_ doing this now. I told you."

He stops. The sand rustles beneath them, mindlessly sifting with the wind and playing over their shoes. She stays caught between the urge to cross over to the next dune and lie down alone and collapsing bonelessly where she is. There are many things that Elika does not know, amongst them the final way to end Ahriman, but one thing she does know is that until she does she will always be tired.

She wishes she could see his face. So that she can read him, of course, and know what he's planning before he opens his mouth.

"Come on, Princess," he says again, and this time it's with his normal voice. The hardened one. The one where she can taste the warmth underneath the weariness, if she cares to pay attention to it. "Better to be prepared now than floundering tomorrow. Like last time."

Elika jerks. She hadn't thought he was going to bring it up. Hadn't thought he would _dare_, after what had happened...

"I'm leaving," she says emotionlessly. "Now."

She turns to go, and then his voice stops her.

"Princess..."

So simple. The still yearning in his voice, the suppressed longing. Enough to call to an echo of her heart and hold her spellbound for a brief moment.

It's only brief though, and she's ready to keep walking when of course, he keeps speaking.

"If I could dream," he says quietly, and now he no longer sounds like he's looking at her. He sounds like he's looking far away, maybe inside the desolate landscapes of his self. "If I could dream, I would dream of life." Something of a smirk slips into his voice then. She wonders if he can ever keep it out. "I'd dream of a donkey, and riding into the sun. Of sand and flowers. Of the fresh smell of the sea, and horizons never-ending."

Perhaps it is because he is no longer talking to her. Or at least doesn't sound like it. But Elika sways for a moment, caught between one dune and the next.

She steps back, and sits down, and is silent for the rest of the night.

* * *

"What could you dream of, if you could dream?"

The dawn is a cold gray, and she knows how it feels as she swings around and hisses into his face. She can see him now. It's a relief, to be able to pin him with the full force of her glare. It's a damn annoyance when he just lets it slide down his cheek, like water. He grins at her, switches back to his normal voice. "Well?"

She growls under her breath, swings around, and keeps walking. There is a scar that beckons them across the horizon, a familiar gouge in the earth that she finds it hard to look at. She feels her stomach clench and twist. "Try this again, and I'm leaving you behind."

She hears his footsteps stop, startled, a break in their dance. And then they resume again, sauntering. "No you wouldn't, Princess," he disagrees pleasantly, idly kicking at a stone in his way. "You need me."

But he doesn't repeat the question.

* * *

"Elika."

She almost slips. For a moment, she feels the sharp, juddering hit of fear she felt when she fell the first time, so many months ago, Then her magic bursts out from underneath her and swings her back to the ledge, and she clings to it like it's something living, a sign from Ormazd.

"Elika!" his voice is alarmed this time, and he skids down and grabs her, sending a shower of sparks cascading after him. She shudders as her arms slide around his neck and he starts the descent down again for both of them. A few seconds later, when the adrenaline dies away, she realises that she's shuddering in anger.

"What were you doing?" he demands in a whisper. He is shivering too, she wonders if they are both vibrating with the same rage. "You're losing your head."

She almost loses her breath at the sheer audacity. "_I'm_ losing my head?" she half-snarls back. "Who was the one who started this in the first place, might I ask? Who was the one who tried to _bargain_ with the God of _Lies_? _Not_ _me_."

He stops, and she can't see his face because he's facing the stone, but her cheek is pressed against his scarves and she can smell the sweat and exhaustion and cold determination in them. Part of her thrums in remembrance of her realisation, not that long ago, and she brutally quashes it.

When he speaks, his voice is cool and even.

"You're losing your head," he say quietly. "You almost died the last time we came down here. And since then, you've been slipping and snapping and you won't tell me..."

She wants to say a lot of things. She wants to maybe even cry. But instead she says, in a voice scraped raw of feeling, "_Don't_."

He hangs for a moment on the cracked and deadened vines. She clings on tightly to him, as if she wants to squeeze his breath out. _No. Don't. Never. _

"Fine," he says. "I won't. But something_ is_ bothering you, Princess, and if letting it out will save both our skins, I suggest you reconsider."

His patience with her has worn thin. She can tell it in the harshness of his voice. She uses it to spur her denial, riding it hard and blindly away from the shadow of the truth stalking her steps.

In her silence, he slowly starts to climb again. It's tiresome, slow work. She watches the stone pass them unseeing, her mind fixed on what awaits them below. The words echo between them, and into the stillness of the gorge.

_What would you dream of, if you could dream?_

They keep climbing, and when they reach the bottom, before she can swing off his shoulders, before they can react, it _happens_.

* * *

The Dreamer is not like the other Corrupted. He still looks mostly human, for one. She can see skin, and clothes, and even most of a face. It's his eyes that mark him out. They are pure Corruption - no pupil, no iris, no eyeball. Just a black pool of stench and despair.

He looms out of the darkness, out of nowhere. And suddenly his voice is all around her, gentle and wistful, hollow and compelling, misty and seductive.

"What would you dream of, if you could dream?"

Elika opens her mouth to scream, in fear or in a battle-cry, she's not quite sure, and then she is suddenly no longer there.

The gorge vanishes. The low, brackish river of Corruption at its bottom is gone. Elika hangs suspended over an endless abyss, and her fear of falling, normally muted underneath the surety of her faith in Ormazd and her knowledge of her magic, heaves and cries under her skin. Two images dance at the edges of her vision, and if she concentrates, dimly, she can feel the Corruption worming into her mind. But the images are more compelling. One, on her left, the dark and silence of her death and the sure knowledge that Ahriman is still imprisoned and the sun shines clear. And on her right, a damaged world, a hardened world, but one lit by a different sun that shows their triumph. _Theirs_. Because she is with him.

Elika wants to curl up and vomit, because she knows what those images mean.

Her denial, though, runs deeper and blacker than the abyss. The picture on her left begins to grow stronger, fuelled by her desperate conviction. Her eyes screw shut. That is what she _should_ want. She _knows_ that. That is what _needs_ to happen.

That is the moment she feels herself begin to give into the dream.

And then someone behind her says, his voice soft and reverent with surprise, "Elika?"

She jerks in surprise. Her concentration scatters. The image on her left falls back with something like a howl, and then the image on the right rushes her and the Prince both with such savage ferocity that they are swallowed up before they can blink.

* * *

She wakes to swearing.

She is lying on warm grass. She rolls over and blinks at it. The soil underneath still looks grey and unhealthy, but the shoots push out of it, determined to grow, and the sun is shining above them.

And he is swearing, and kicking at clods, and generally acting bewildered.

_That doesn't seem right..._

A frown twists her face as she stares down at the dirt. This wasn't what had happened last time. Unless...

The realisation hits her like a camel. Elika almost laughs, and then she smothers it. She rises instead and arches her eyebrow at him. It feels good to do so, a little warm aspect of the dream that tries to creep into her mind and get a foothold.

He swings around as if he can feel her gaze, and then the words burst from his lips as if he can't control them any more. "I don't get it!" he says, half-cry, half-shout. "The last time you came out of this you acted like some part of you had _died_." He kicks again at the dirt, and then curses liberally as he hits a rock. "Ow!"

She wants to smile at him. Wants to explain. She can feel the tendrils of the dream eagerly surging forth at the awakening of those desires, trying to take her and twist her to the Dreamer's control. But it's different this time. Now she is no longer struggling against both him and herself. Now it's just him, because she has the Prince, the real Prince with her. And even though that means he can't rescue her from the outside like he did last time, it gives her an odd sense of hope. They have done the impossible together before, she knows that. She'll even grudgingly admit it if pushed. Having him with her...

Makes them strong.

"I don't know how you came in here," she says brusquely. "Perhaps it's because we were still touching this time when he got us. But maybe we can find a way out together before..."

The memory flashes at her, and then is subdued by the Dreamer's hand. Still, that moment is enough. Elika remembers the moment of complete silence, complete desolation, complete emptiness when faced with a copy of the Prince, a construct of her mind, herself all alone in her denial and being held still with her mind violated by the Dreamer. She swallows. At least there is no copy this time. Perhaps that will turn the balance. She swallows again, and hopes. "Before something bad happens."

He shakes his head again, but realisation has caught up with him and he remembers. "Last time I got you out by getting a knife in the bastard's gut," he says. He starts to shift from foot to foot now, restless. "How are we meant to do this from the inside?"

She freezes. She thought he would know, somehow. "I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't..." he cuts himself off abruptly, and turns away. She realises she is seeing him at his unfettered best. Annoyance and irritation and quickness all. He's been holding back around her since the last time, she knows. As if she was something that might break. She winces. Perhaps it was the way she had acted, as if she'd been made of ice splinters.

Now, he's just being him. And that brings her hope from some strange place she doesn't want to think about.

He turns back just as the warmth from the hope makes itself known to her, and the Dreamer tries to dig in again. His eyes are sharp. "Maybe we can get out of here if we can figure out more about how this works." He gestures at the air vaguely. "What was that blackness before? What is this dream?"

Her stomach abruptly drops out of the bottom of her belly. "I don't think that will work," she says quickly. She folds her arms around her, for warmth. "I think we..."

She peters off, because she doesn't really know. Part of her closes her eyes in disgust. He was right. She is slipping.

And then she almost does it for real, because suddenly he is almost on top of her, eyes inches away, nostrils flaring.

"Elika," he says flatly. "Our bodies might be dying out there. Whatever you've been trying to hide from me, now is a really bad time to keep doing it."

Elika halts.

The world seems to spin past as he waits for her. She doesn't pay it any attention. She knows it. It is a world that has gone through much pain and sorrow and hardship, and seen far more than its share of war and death, and yet that is what she has chosen, and it still horrifies her in ways she doesn't want to confront.

But it seems he does. "Princess..."

The sound snaps a memory in her again. One that the Dreamer tries to control, but can't understand, and so has to let through his fingers. _"If I could dream," he says quietly, and now he no longer sounds like he's looking at her. He sounds like he's looking far away, maybe inside the desolate landscapes of his self. "If I could dream, I would dream of life." _

The words unlock something in her. She thinks that if she woke up now, she could weep. She looks quickly to the side of him; it's somehow easier if she's looking at his scarves, and not at his face.

"Okay," she says softly. "Okay."

He stops.

In the stillness, she keeps speaking to his scarves. They wave in the sunlight and wind, their faded colours still bright against the sky. She wishes she could see them like that in the real world. She dreams she will one day again.

She dreams.

"The last time I was here," she says, and her voice is softer still because it feels like the Dreamer is now seizing her head and crushing it. She stifles the gasps from the pain. "I thought I would dream of death. Of what should have happened."

She doesn't need to explain. She sees the horror and sick memory on his face, and she is grateful for a moment that denial has no sway here, or at least not much of one. "But instead I found myself here, and then I realised that meant..."

The words are still hard to say. Harder than she imagined. But she manages.

"Then I realised that meant that... even at the deepest core of me... I don't want to be dead anymore." _And that I want to be with you, and so many other things. _

She wonders how much of that he will understand. She feels like she can't say more, like her pride and shame are stopping up her tongue just as effectively as the Dreamer ripping apart her mind. But she manages to fix on his face and she knows the moment he understands, in a way he wouldn't have those months ago on that day in her city.

"You little idiot," he breathes.

The words should hurt, but nothing hurts more than the Dreamer right now, his fingers digging into her skull. She gasps and sinks to one knee, and then he is there, his grip firm on her shoulder and his words hissed hard into her ear, as if he's no longer afraid she will break under him.

She is glad.

"This last week you've been drowning yourself in shame." The whisper is hard, like a slingshot. "But what you don't get is that you haven't chosen to sacrifice people just so that you can stay alive. You've chosen to _live_, and knowing you, to defeat Ahriman forever."

He pauses, for significance. A part of her is distantly amused. He always did have the flair for the dramatic.

"For once, for yourself and not your people, you've chosen to _dream_."

Elika doesn't quite hear the words until the impact hits her, slaps her across the face. She hadn't thought of it like that. She hadn't. She had only felt the complete shock of having her beliefs about herself, her world, and her loyalty ripped away from her. She was the last Princess of the Ahura. Her death had caused this mess. Surely she should want to dream she had stayed dead. Surely she was being disloyal if she didn't. Surely that meant she was no longer the right person to do this, no longer the Warrior of light.

But perhaps he is right, and if that is the case...

The pain lifts. Dimly, distantly, Elika thinks she can hear the Dreamer screaming as the shards of the dream are reflected back at him, coiling in on themselves to sting the hand of the master who once wielded them. And then comes an explosion of sunrise behind her eyes - the light and the hope she had buried underneath her denial, fierce enough to burn and strong enough to smoulder, even through Ahriman's night.

For the first time since her first death, Elika feels truly alive.

And in the moments before the grass and the sun and the sky shatter, she manages to lift her head and turn to face him. He looks like he always has; windblown and handsome, strong and snide. But this time she focuses on eyes; fierce, wild, and full of the love she can admit to herself exists.

Here in the dreamworld, at least.

And then they leap forwards, into the future, into the darkness, and into eventual light.

* * *

o

o

o

o

* * *

A/N - I haven't written for a long time, I know. Part of this is because I'm currently travelling in Europe, and part of this is because I think I'm scared of writing again. But tonight I met up with PauseTheTragicEnding, and I was inspired once more. So thank you to PauseTheTragicEnding for your unfailing support and enthusiasm, and thank you to everyone who is still reading this, and given me their support and encouragement. I can't tell you all how much I appreciate it.

Take care, for now.

Shadowhawke.


	27. Desolation

**Desolation**

This is not a story for the light.

She coughs dryly. The desert sand scores the back of her throat and leaves her hoarse. Hoarser. She's done with screaming, done with the crying, done with everything. Instead she walks, and even though she can't feel his weight - what with her magic levitating his prone body - she feels much, much more resting on her slender shoulders.

Elika walks.

He floats in front of her, an inch or so from her arms. She has them outstretched, like she can catch him again. She knows she can't. There is nothing to catch anymore. The world around them is still black, as black as ever. Hers is the only colour in this blasted wasteland. The colour of mud and despair.

Elika breathes.

She feels the magic leaping in her. Increasing. It seems like it has been years since the light seeds back in the City, or the shell of her city, and yet the magic is increasing. Soon it will push out to her skin without her trying, soon it will take her over. She wonders what will be left.

Elika dreams.

When she had been younger, the hero she'd fantasized herself being was… her. Was all her. Every thought, every act, every step. But now she feels the alien consciousness pressing in on her. The God who is waiting.

She doesn't have long.

She stumbles over the next dune, tries to suck in a lungful of air that doesn't hurt. It's there, on the horizon, back where it all started. Something meaningful. She wants to try.

It's hard to recognize the cliff side where she landed on him.

She looks for a while. Feels her time running out. Doesn't care any more. Hasn't cared for a while… since she saw him stumble, since she realized the light inside her was growing. There is no longer a sense of urgency. She doesn't think much lives that is worth saving. The world will be left to the mercy of two gods once more. Perhaps they will reshape it. But she doesn't care if they do.

She finds the cliff, and that's when the change begins.

Blue light seizes her from the inside. Elika gasps and drops to her knees. He drops down with her, still at arm-height. His head lolls back. She stares into his closed eyes and starts to weep blue fire. The tears hit her cheeks and become incandescent. They melt through her skin and she feels pain. She looks down at herself. Underneath the rags of her clothes, her wrappings, she is translucent, spirit-blue.

The last thing to go is her mind. She gasps and gasps and cries and she doesn't know if she's crying harder for the desolate wasteland, the Prince, or for herself. He's there, eyes closed, mouth lined. She wants him to smirk with that mouth again. He was so alive, and now it's unfair that he's so…

Something shatters inside her, and her mind floods with blue light.

* * *

Ormazd stands up in what was once a human body. He frowns down at the detritus in front of him. Ah, yes. The graverobber who doomed the world…

For one moment, something creeps into the edge of his consciousness, like a wordless cry, or a shout of pain, even love…

And then it is gone.

Ormazd leaves the corpse in his wake. He has more important things to do.

* * *

.

.

.

.

* * *

Sorry for the shortness and the down-ness of it all. I'm afraid I'm not going through the best time at the moment, but I'm sure it will pass.

On the bright side, PauseTheTragicEnding has informed me there will indeed be a new PoP sequel! And that does make me happy. :)

Thanks again to everyone who is still sticking with me for these shorts. They won't end until my inspiration does, or yours.

- Shadowhawke


End file.
